Complaint for poor service on MCO-AMS flight
 

All:
First time post here so apologies if I'm not following some protocol.
I'm a GM member and fly Delta mostly from Europe to US for work on economy tickets a few times a year. I've been a skymiles member for more than 10 years but I'm not traveling nearly as much as it seems like most of the members of this forum are though. However, I received poor inflight customer service on a recent MCO-AMS flight with family over the Christmas break while seated in economy and I wrote a complaint letter to Delta customer service. They replied with an email a week later stating that they "...certainly understand why you wanted to let us know about this situation. We expect our staff to be courteous and helpful at all times. I’m really sorry you, and your family didn’t receive the service you expected." While this was nice to hear, I was surprised that no compensation was offered but simply "Unfortunately, we do not offer good will gestures for employee behavior. his is something that we address with the employee internally, providing coaching. "
Is this standard response from airlines and perhaps I'm overestimating my GM status? It's fine to be honest with me - no worries. We usually fly SAS as we're based out of CPH so it's not like I have alot invested in Delta, but I'm just a bit surprised at their response after seeing and hearing others getting offered vouchers, refunds, etc..
Thanks in advance for your assistance.

What happened?

Without knowing what the issue was it's impossible to tell you if you were compensated fairly.

Running out of sparkling water and being forced to sit in a seat with fecal matter on it can both be examples of poor service.

Welcome to FT. Be glad you received a response that even remotely addressed your complaint. Usually they are canned responses that have been cut and pasted. The recent response I received had zero to do with my complaint. The response had multiple errors and after reading it I could only conclude it was written for another PAX. The followup survey resulted in a bunch zeros.

However, while I did not and typically do not ask for compensation I am to receive bunch of miles for my "disappointment." They have yet to be delivered. I have decided that if the miles are not delivered I am going to make a phone call as sometime years I had reasonable luck in taking to someone at Delta's corporate office about some issues.

My advise would be to write off the response. FWIW, when I do want compensation I ask for specific amount in Delta dollars.

It's unfortunate you had a poor experience.

You might try referring to this thread for information about compensation others have received, and see if any of your experience lines up with other posts:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delt...on-thread.html

Welcome to Flyertalk and the Delta Forum, jspruit
It would be helpful if you would describe the issues which led to your letter of complaint
Obscure2k
Delta Moderator

From my experience they are very stingy with miles for customer service. I once complained as a DM 360 for a (regional) FA treating me in a very rude way, and got 3,500 miles for that. It wouldn't surprise me if for gold members they would simply not give out miles for that since in all fairness, it's hard to define black vs. white what improper customer service is, and if they open the door too much they could just be getting complaints over and over and be handing out miles to just anyone. Compare that to e.g., a flight with a Mx failure, a broken seat, etc. all of those are factual issues.

To your question; you're overestimating gold status, but only by a tiny bit. I'm sure that for a broken IFE or delayed flight or so you would have gotten miles.

Until OP responds explaining what exactly happened this is all speculation. Why not give a chance to get some facts. Even on FT they can be helpful.

Was this a domestic flight or a TATL flight

The Christmas holidays were prone to domestic disruptions due to weather with packed full airplanes

This was an international flight from Orlando to Amsterdam.

Thanks for the responses everyone, I'll check out the compensation thread for more information. In the meantime I can provide some more info about the case:
As some background information, I usually travel alone internationally in economy or Comfort Plus for work and I'm fairly no frills - no dietary requirements, aisle seat, headphones on, etc. But on this flight I was flying with my wife (vegetarian and prone to travel sickness) as well as my three small children under the age of 10 (two of which are prone to travel sickness). As some of you know, travel can be stressful with a group like this and the service we received didn't help out at all. In general, our complaints were mostly subjective and were the sort of thing that left a bad impression and made the trip more difficult and deemed a response from us we thought. Here are a few of the instances that I described in my complaint letter to Delta:
We sat near the back of the plane and there were some free seats around us - we asked one of the flight attendants if we could move around and have some of the free seats and were told that we could do that as soon as boarding was complete. Once boarding was complete, we spaced out in the same row as directed by the same flight attendant. A few minutes later we were told by another flight attendant that "You can't do that" and we responded that the other flight attendant said that was alright only to be told "That was wrong" and pointed to return to our normal seats.
During boarding, one flight attendant was confirming that people that ordered special meals and skipped our row. When I asked the same flight attendant to confirm that my wife's vegetarian meal was onboard, I was told that it wasn't without them even checking the list. When I showed them the sticker on the back of her seat indicating a special meal was ordered, the same flight attendant then said "Oh well I guess it is." This was distinctly different service than the two women in front of received when they were asked very specifically about their dietary restrictions and if there was anything else special that they needed. When the flight attendant left after that encounter, the women in front of us turned around and offered their meal to my wife if she didn't receive hers. When it came time to serve the meals, they didn't give my wife her vegetarian meal and when we asked about it we were told that there may be extra in the back and we will have to check ourselves after all of the other passengers were served. This seems strange considering we ordered the vegetarian meal when we bought the tickets and later confirmed the vegetarian meal a week before flying with the airline. Finally, the team leader arrived with a vegetarian meal for my wife after we went to the back and asked for one and blamed the delay on the fact that we switched seats (although we were all still clearly sitting in the same row) and told us that "We can't do that - how do they know where we are sitting then?" even though we moved the special meal sticker to the new seat as requested by one of the other flight attendants.
There was unfortunately some turbulence during the flight and at one time both my wife and son were puking in the sick bags. When the flight attendant walked by our seat I asked for some more sick bags and was told "We are starting meal service now" and they continued walking away. After meal service I went back to the plane and asked the flight attendant for more sick bags and was asked where the used sick bags were and I responded that I put them in the bathroom trash chute. I was told that this wasn't the correct procedure and that I needed to place them in a separate trash bag. I was then given a trash bag and asked to collect any of the other used sick bags and return it to a special compartment in the bathroom. The bathroom was closed at that time I came back to the back of the plane and I still had family members that were getting sick (keeping used sick bags around people that are getting sick usually isn't a good thing) and the flight attendant refused to take care of the special trash bag because he was preparing for a drink service.
All of the above was served with a nice level of passive aggressiveness that I would have expected from a snarky comic sitcom rather than an airline. Unfortunately, I was not able to make a complaint in person as when we were leaving the plane one of my kids was still nauseous and the majority of the rudeness came from the team leader himself.
I suppose that the above may seem trivial to some people and are 'first-world' problems but they seem counter to the level of service that we've received in normal economy seating on other airlines and it seems like a bit of courtesy and manners would have made non-issues out of the above instances. As an affirmation that we weren't the worst flying family in the world (my wife was feeling guilty by this time thinking that we had done something wrong somehow to offend the flight attendants), after the flight we had multiple people sitting around us tell us how well behaved our children were considering the rudeness of the service that we received.
Venting over for now....

In terms of what to expect for compensation, I would honestly expect very little. My last complaint to DL was about a year ago simply asking for ORC - Original Routing Credit - for a diverted flight that received zero earnings of any kind. I escalated and escalated and kept being told they do not offer ORC or credit of any kind for diverted flights. I finally gave up as the ORC would have been a trivial amount anyway. That being said about 6 months before this issue I sent in an email simply informing them of an inoperative IFE screen on a specific aircraft. Didn't ask for anything and got 8500 miles. So, my advice would be to not ask for anything when it comes to complaints unless it is an issue you are entitled to (like refunds for downgrades, etc).

Sadly your experience with the unhelpful and rude FA's is becoming more and more common in air travel. Even sometimes in F we experience lackluster crew.

Also, when sending in an initial complaint you might have more luck keeping it very concise. Just a few sentences expressing your disappointment with the unsatisfactory crew. Then, there is a chance someone at DL might reach out beyond the canned response to find out more info. Most likely if that happens you would be offered compensation for your time. (I know, the venting can feel good though!)

Welcome to FT!

Its funny because 5-8 years ago Delta used to throw out 10k + miles for the seat not reclining on a 37 minute flight.

Maybe I have become apathetic but unless I am forced to sit in poo or I am in a bulkhead and the lav is leaking into the carpet where I am sitting I have realized it is pointless to complain. I can assure you DL (just like any large corporation) literally does not care about peoples complaints UNLESS somehow they (the customer) get it to the level of a large regional or national media organization then PR/marketing has to at least half way care about responding. It may be a depressing way to look at it but when I stopped caring life got a lot easier. :)

(This outlook can be used for any large organization. Amazon, National Car, United, American Airlines, etc etc)