Global Adventurer

You shouldn't, but you will if you don't want to stay on hold. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is right now.

p100a

Couldn't change ticket online. Called DM line for a simple change in date.. Recording said hold time 2 mins... Waited 35 mins for someone to answer. Agent was unable to make any change, on hold for another 30 mins! Why is it so difficult to conduct simple changes with them? I'm still on hold! The utter incompetence is stunning.
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sonkie23

I'm having a similar experience this morning. I was told I'd get a callback in 9 minutes - Gold line. 30 minutes later no call so I called again. Said the callback was coming in 9 minutes. 15 minutes later I got the callback. Waited on hold for 3.5 minutes, no one ever picked up. Started the callback process again with a 35 minute wait time. Hour later, no call.

I have only myself to blame here as I should have booked this trip on American. I keep trying to give Delta the benefit of the doubt as they were always my preference pre-COVID, but I now officially feel like a glutton for punishment and I think it's time to finally move on.

Global Adventurer

Why are you guys still calling the US customer service number?

p100a

In my case I called the USA DM line and was surprised I was actually talking to Singapore. It was around 630am EST.

Global Adventurer

You were lucky even though it took longer than you expected, because it is SATURDAY when all the cancellations and modifications happen.

gpicur

I am trying to add an In Cabin Pet reservation to an existing award ticket. NO WHERE on the DL website is this option available. I do not have Medallion Status and called the 1-800-323-2323 number at about 11pm EDT, thinking the hold time would be less late on a Saturday night. I called several times earlier today and the recording said the wait time was less than four hours. At least when I called the number tonight the recording said the wait time is less than 2 hours. I just visited FT now and saw the Singapore option.

I have run into this problem with Delta Phone operations several times over the past year, especially with International issues.

I am not a frequent Delta flyer but find their flight operations service to be quite good. I just cannot imagine Delta refuses to address this Phone Center problem for over one year.

We're at 1:48:30 now. Any bets as to whether I get an agent on the phone within 2 hours ? I guess I will visit the Airport tomorrow and get an agent to help me.

RealHJ

Even if simple things like cancel and redeposit worked reliably, it would cut down on the wait times to get through to reservations. Now, it works (usually, thankfully) if no flights have been cancelled. But, once a flight gets cancelled, you get the "we can't rebook you on any other flights" message on top and going to "modify" flights never works and just throws up a generic error message of "Delta reservation systems are down", forcing you to call. Just for something as simple as cancel and redeposit a ticket.

Dullta is still clearly stuck in the 1980s and is adamant to force its customers to have to call for the most basic things, which other airlines have allowed customers to do online for a few decades.

RealHJ

Probably not too long. I think there is a timeframe within which an airline HAS to respond to a DOT forwarded complaint. I think it's a week or 10 days, something like that. So I'd say likely no more than 10 days, may be even just a few days.

Delta CS is now actually pretty good, especially when compared to not only hard to reach but the-opposite-of-competent (and extremely anti-customer oriented, which is apparently driven from the top down) reservations. Delta CS is just as peeved and frustrated with reservations as customers are, and also I suspect have a lot of frustration as reservations keeps hanging up on customers and sending them to CS, and CS has to get them back to res. as it's an obvious res. issue that res. just wanted to "close out" in order to meet their quotas or what not (or just because they don't give a damn, or don't know how to do their job - or both).

I think there's a good chance you hear back from someone actually customer-centric in CS, and they may put you in touch with a more competent and experienced reservations agent, from a group that is not available to the general public and doesn't normally speak to customers.

AA is still better than DL though. Just the lack of real time ticketing and redeposits for awards is an annoyance..

Yes and no. It's purely an element of luck. Now though it's the worst it's ever been and the chance to get to someone good, who knows what they are doing, care, and actually can help you for anything but the simplest most basic things, are slim. From what I've heard, the new res agents are under a lot of pressure to get customers off the line ASAP, while at the same time they have little to no access to actually do anything themselves.

gpicur

So even though the recording said my wait time would be less than 2 hours, I was on hold for 2 hours and 48 minutes and I finally hung up. I will go to the airport today to complete my pet reservation. I did leave a complaint on the Delta website about this chronic problem.

beachmouse

Though at least with Delta, they're pretty likely to set their schedule 2 weeks out and not cancel flights at the last minute because they don't have the personnel to operate them. American is developing an almost Allegiant-like reputation at my local airport because of long lines at the landside desks, flights cancelled on day of departure because of a pilot shortage with GAs giving awful rebooking options, etc.

I'm really glad to be back in the air again even though I had the crystal ball out in February (credit card companies reporting huge spikes in over-65s buying plane tickets then) that this was going to be a summer of pain regardless of who you were traveling with because it's a lot harder to rebuild a system than it is to just make 70-80% cuts to it.

spongenotbob

Apparently you haven’t read about the 3-4 operational meltdowns Delta has had in the past 9 months where that is, in fact, EXACTLY what they did....

beachmouse

3-4 days over many months compared to 2+ weeks and steadily getting worse with AA right now.

lucycan

Just called and got my longest hold time ever. "More than 3 hours" was the callback time. Wow.

coke cans and winglets

AA isn’t faster right now, been waiting 7.5hrs on a callback since they canceled my flight next week because of their pilot shortage meltdown…