NYC has snow and Kardashians, both of which I am not a fan. #Snowmageddon2015

Arrived late to the gate for DL 109 ATL-SEA on Sunday. Gate agent sounded stressed and was offering $800 "delta dollars" for one volunteer to fly out the following day.

She was asking all volunteers to wait in the gate area to make sure they were needed. She was careful to say that if they weren't needed they would board to their original assigned seats.

I guess that's what confused me, as I watched the GA take my exit row seat away from me... I suppose there could have been a late no-show that opened a seat back up for me, but why take a DM's seat away if you don't really need it?

Go a call 16 days ahead of time trying to find volunteers for DL3705 on 2/14/15 from BOS to FLL direct. Agent said they are severely overbooked and offering $300/person or 30000 points/person to reschedule.

Where you standing behind this agent and watching everything she did?

Not that it really matters, but no. I had VDBed on the flight so I was standing at the counter as my voucher and new BP were being processed. At the same time, the gate agents were processing the IDB.

If anyone wants to call me nosy I will refer you to the plain view doctrine :cool:

What's interesting is that if you do a dummy booking for BOS-FLL on 2/14 DL is still selling Y & F seats for that flight. Maybe they ended up compensating more people than needed and/or had a few changes/cancellations.

Compensation: “Bumps” — Voluntary and Involuntary Denied Boarding
 

Well what does that $300 really cost Delta, I'm sure some will go unused and some might buy a ticket in excess of $300 that they might not have before. Actually,I was offered the same thing and was able to get even more for a flight that was 6 days out. Only way they really lose on this is if misconnects or VDB get those Full Fare Y's when rebooking

It's F2,Y1 at $833 Y and $1145 F, so maybe they think it's worth paying someone else $300 to switch.

If you want to play silly games, buy it in Y and see if they'll pay you to switch; once they do, cancel and get a full refund.

When they called both F and Y showed full on the seat chart. I thought about it but decided against it as I have two small kids with me which is why I did the nonstop in the first place and I also rather not have chance getting stuck on a connection that would get us stuck somewhere and miss our cruise the next day knowing my luck.

This flight has also had two equipment changes in the last two months from A319 to 717 to CR900 so they supply has been cut a lot by Delta.

There have been reports of people getting into trouble for doing this. IIRC some airline VDB rules state that there will be no compensation if you don't fly the alternative flights to your destination. I guess you can cancel a full Y ticket without penalty at the last minute if you don't get the VDB, but if you must fly at such prices, the chances of VDB compensation exceeding the fare would seem unlikely.

That could be extremely nasty. E.g. I VDB from the noon non-stop to a 1 PM connection. The 1 PM flight is delayed (or canceled, but in the latter case I have a better chance to argue) so I switch to a 2 PM non-stop (which wasn't available for the VDB for whatever reason, or maybe it just got in after the connection). It would be very bad form to deny me my VDB compensation.

I think you'd be OK if you then switch to another flight, or even take VDB again, but what you can't do is cancel and refund the full Y ticket, take your VDB compensation, and go home without flying. This is to avoid the situation of someone who deliberately purchases a full Y ticket on on overbooked flight with the plan to use it to collect VDB comp without ever having any intention of flying. There was a report of some guy hanging around the airport and making a lot of money doing exactly this.

But just out of curiosity; there's a big difference between someone hanging around the airport trying to continuously collect vs. someone who did this one time. Kind of like hidden city ticketing. If you do it once DL lets it slide. When it's becoming a repeat offense is when DL acts, no?

Probably. Once and you could say that it was a change of plans, such as a business meeting being cancelled or some business or family emergency. When it becomes a habit, or if you do it multiple times in one day with flights to different destinations, you should be in trouble.