Delta collects 10 cents!
 

I had a full-Y ticket on the 3:30 Shuttle from LGA to DCA and needed to change it to the 2:30 Shuttle. I really didn't need to do anything because, after all, it is the Shuttle! And I could always fly standby for free (or same-day confirmed, to be technical about it). But I wanted to check in on-line and wanted my boarding pass to be for the right flight, so I called SMS.

Well, the original ticket was purchased in 2004. Apparently, a new ticket purchased in 2005 has 10 cents higher taxes imposed. The guy asked me how I was going to pay this 10 cents additional cost.

Now, let me be very clear. I can afford to give Delta 10 cents. Really! It usually doesn't come out of my pocket, anyway. But it just seemed to me that collecting 10 cents over the phone, which requires a credit-card charge, had to be more trouble than it's worth for me, Delta and even AMEX. So I innocently asked, "Couldn't you just waive 10 cents?"

You would have thought that I had asked for a free airplane! The guy, apparently horrified, said, "That's a government tax. We have to collect it or we would get fined." Not quite satisfied with that answer, I suggested that Delta could certainly remit the 10 cents to the government, thereby avoiding the dreaded fine, and simply swallow the cost. The guy, clearly not the brightest light, said that it would be illegal for Delta to do that.

In the end, I gave him my AMEX number and let him put through a charge for 10 cents so that I could fly an hour earlier without any hassles at the airport. I will not put that charge on my expense report because I would be too embarrassed.

Bruce

Very funny story - but I understand they do have to balance the books.

Wow, when did Leo return??? :eek:

I've had Amex turn down attempts to charge less than $1. Only Delta could get a dime to go through. :D

How bizzare.

I understand why DL needs to collect taxes but for the cost of the credit card transaction, it hardly makes it worth charging the consumer 10 cents.

Not worth fighting over a dime but you think DL would have just bit the bullet on that one. Plus, if I were the agent, I would have been embarrased to even ask for 10 cents. :eek:

Quit bashing Delta and aim your anger at the people who are responsible for nickel and diming us to death -- CONGRESS

Don't forget that every dime counts! :)

Sane thing happened to me with a ticket previously purchased in 2004 but, in my case, I owed almost TWICE as much ......18 cents!!! I put it on my charge card, which, of course, cost more to process than the 18 cents!

It's interesting that the day prior to this transaction I DID NOT have to pay it, despite the identical routes, price of ticket, and all purchased on the same day in 2004. Go figure!! :confused:

Should have just told them to check the seat cushions after your flight... ;)

If you are a stock holder of DL, then bashing would be the least of what you should do. This just proves that DL is out of control. They probably just spend 30c to make 10c. Now the 30c is just a guess! However, when you know it is going to cost more to collect then what you are collecting.... I guess now they will ask for FAs to take a pay cut of 10% and 10c to cover things like this in the future.

Now, as far as Congress goes, you don't need to bash them (although they do deserve it), just vote them out.

LOL... but you are not flying WN and I am sure that would have required all kinds of paper work and additional labor charges ;) Simple fares HAH, how about simple business policies....

Come on now. Tax is tax. Delta absolutely has to collect the tax -- from you. The guy was only doing his job. The red tape involved in figuring out how, when, how much, and under what circumstances Delta should pick up the tab on the taxes that YOU are responsibile for paying would likely outweight the time required to process the added tax. Yeah, it's an ammusing little story that you had to charge $0.10 cents to your credit card, but even suggesting that you should do anything besides stop complaining and paid that tax is, well, silly.

Delta absolutely has to collect the tax. However, they could have decided to give you a .10 refund on your fare and apply the refund to the tax payment.

Clearly you know not of what you speak. If DL can not figure out how to credit 10c from your already paid ticket to taxes with a few keystrokes, I wonder what they do with 10M$ worth of potential savings... My old boss used to tell me... if you can't count your pennies, you cant count your millions.

Now theres an idea!! Delta could implement an inventory system that assured that all the coins collected under the seat cushions made it to a central office where they were equally distributed into glass jars the number of which corressponded to the number of phone agents. Through a formalized distribution system, these jars would then be placed on the desk-space in the cubicle of each agent. In situations like the one reported by the OP, they could, like is done all the time in 7-11's all over the country, take the dime from the jar, fill out a cash-payment form and submit that and the dime as payment to the government.

I mean, it seams that this will fit right into the way Delta and other legacy carriers conduct business!! :D

This would work, but a few considerations have to be thought about... Since this is "cash" their needs to be an audit trail. Every time any coins are used there would have to be paperwork. What about international coins... do Canadian coins go to call centers in Canada and Indian coin to India. Can DL possibly manage FX hedging (they don't seem to do as well as WN does in fuel hedging...). Perhaps DL can start an entire new department to count their pennies and trim back the FF program to cover the expected looses from saving money.

Dumb
 

I'm sure that DL gets a bulk discount AMEX and though I have no idea what it is, I'm prepared to assume that it cost them more than $.10 just to process the charge.

It reminds me of a spring break road trip that I took with a friend in High School. We made it all the way to Daytona and back, sleeping in his van, eating bologna on white bread with packets of mustard from fast food restaurants.

We made it over the George Washington Bridge into NY on fumes. But even after searching pockets, and digging under seat cushions and floor mats, we got to the toll booths and came up 30cents short. It took about 25 minutes of anagent's time copying license info, 24cents for a stamp and 99cents for a money order to mail in the 30cents.

For a couple of teenagers at the end of an adventure, it was :D :p :D

For DL it's just :( :confused: :rolleyes: :mad:

Clearly there were ways around it...

At the end of the call, still trying to be good-natured, I asked the guy, "Doesn't Delta give you the authority to waive an amount as small as 10 cents?" His answer: "No." He didn't seem too happy about it, either.

Bruce

Sure Delta has to account for the tax, but Delta has lots of slush to cover this as they do not refund tax on cancelled or unused tickets. This is not an insignificant amount and has been under discussion by the government as Delta (and all carriers) do not send these monies to the the government but keeps them as revenue.

Deleted

Don't forget, this issue involves the government which effectively takes care of the common sense!! :rolleyes:

Since you must know the laws of aviation tax collection as well as airline revenue accounting, why don't you tell us all what he should have done instead...

Ummm.....Taxes cannot be waived

Aren't you the same guy who beat up on a cabbie because he didn't pass through to you the EasyPass toll discount on the way to the airport, dispite saving you time on the toll line. And stiffed him on principle, when you could have avoided the argument altogether and just given a smaller tip.

I apologize if I have you confused with someone else.

It's a good thing they collected the tax. Otherwise, a month from now, the government would have sent them a bill for the ten cents, plus a $24.50 lateness charge, $11.77 interest, and a $10 processing fee.

Either you know the same amount, more or less. So, if you know, more, please let us know what that is so we can all be better informed. If you know the same or less, then no need to reply and we will all know!

I must side with Delta on this one. If you go to the grocery store (in a state that charges say a 10% sales tax on groceries) and buy a coke for $1.00. I don't think that the store can waive the $.10. Why would they want to lower their price so that the tax is included?

I realize that it seems a bit absurd on the surface - but I imagine that it is a lot simpler to collect the $.10 instead of trying to find a way to adjust the fare basis in order to pay the appropriate tax to the government.

IMHO, I think that Delta deserves a break on this one.

BigJim, try going back and reading the thread from page one. Your statement is out of context for the entire discussion.

JRF,

You're going to have to help me out on what is out of context - I'm apparently having stupid Thursday. The original post is actually what I was responding to.

bigjim

"I had a full-Y ticket on the 3:30 Shuttle from LGA to DCA and needed to change it to the 2:30 Shuttle. I really didn't need to do anything because, after all, it is the Shuttle! And I could always fly standby for free (or same-day confirmed, to be technical about it). But I wanted to check in on-line and wanted my boarding pass to be for the right flight, so I called SMS.

Well, the original ticket was purchased in 2004. Apparently, a new ticket purchased in 2005 has 10 cents higher taxes imposed. The guy asked me how I was going to pay this 10 cents additional cost.

Now, let me be very clear. I can afford to give Delta 10 cents. Really! It usually doesn't come out of my pocket, anyway. But it just seemed to me that collecting 10 cents over the phone, which requires a credit-card charge, had to be more trouble than it's worth for me, Delta and even AMEX. So I innocently asked, "Couldn't you just waive 10 cents?"

You would have thought that I had asked for a free airplane! The guy, apparently horrified, said, "That's a government tax. We have to collect it or we would get fined." Not quite satisfied with that answer, I suggested that Delta could certainly remit the 10 cents to the government, thereby avoiding the dreaded fine, and simply swallow the cost. The guy, clearly not the brightest light, said that it would be illegal for Delta to do that.

In the end, I gave him my AMEX number and let him put through a charge for 10 cents so that I could fly an hour earlier without any hassles at the airport. I will not put that charge on my expense report because I would be too embarrassed.

Bruce "

Some of the joking aside, I think that BigJim's comment fit right in with the entire discussion...

Additionally, while maybe it is absurd to ask for a charge card number for $ 0.10 and for Delta to not swallow the tax (even though it is just .10) or maybe it is the law, but it is also somewhat absurd to reticket on the Delta Shuttle. All you have to do is check in in person or online and head to the gate. If you get there early, they will re-issue your boarding pass right at the gate. I do it all of the time and have never had a problem.

We joke about the 30 cent cost to process the 10 cent transaction, but what about the cost imposed on Delta by the original poster to do a ticket change that was unneccessary?

I've often been accused of being one of the dimmer bulbs in a high-wattage world. Consistent with that analysis, I have a very dumb question:

Why the hell did the phone agent issue a new ticket instead of just changing the outbound departure time? Given that it was full-Y, couldn't it be changed without complete reissue?

:confused:

Anyway, it's a funny story. DL spends at least a quarter of its own money (CC flat charge) to collect a dime. :D

Would the agent have allowed Bruce to just drop off the dime at the airport? :)

Should have followed your own advice when responding in post #24...

On the bright side of all of this, if you used the Delta Amex card, the $.10 charge earned you .2 miles.

Waving the 10% sales tax is not the issue. The issue is doing a charge card transaction for 10c when it will cost DL more then that to process the request. Now, if you did not open the soda and brought it back and wanted a larger soda, and the merchant said the price difference is 10c and you wanted to pay with a credit card for the 10c, then the cost would be more then 10c to the merchant.

I would have proudly expensed it. They are idiots. Simply Good Business Lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 :rolleyes:

This case isn't just isolated to DL.....all airlines must abide by new 2005 gov't tax rules.

Even if it's a change in flight, and the same fare, the fare must be recalculated when confirming and that results in any difference, which must be collected and transmitted to the government. It seems trivial, I know, but the rules are rules... :rolleyes:

Still, the question remains...
 

Why can't DL and the rest of them re-calculate the price so that base fare is increased/reduced by the net change in tax? Sounds fairly simple, and I would not mind it even if my "base fare" went up in case taxes decreased (unlikely, I know). As long as the total adds up to the same number, who cares?

IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TAXES... IF YOU HAVE TO COLLECT 10C AND IT IS GOING TO COST 30C TO COLLECT THE 10C, DONT COLLECT IT, INSTEAD TAKE IT OUT OF THE GENERAL LEDGER AND SAVE 20C. HOW MANY DL EMPLOYEES ARE POSTING HERE TONIGHT? DUH!

The transactional cost to Delta is only one of the issues raised.

The original post also posed the question of why couldn't Delta just cover the cost of the additional tax out of the original fare and that is what BigJim was addressing.

Many other issues arise from the orginial post and also may validly be explored such as

1) Why is it that reissued tickets have the additional charge as opposed to being charged at the original rate or better yet, why were the 2005 tax rates not applied to the cost of the ticket in the first place as it is not like the new charges were dreamed up over night on the 31st and went into effect the next day. This is a valid thing to ask the Congress and the regulators about.

2) What about the transactional costs to Delta to rebook a ticket for an earlier flight when in reality (and the original poster acknowledges this) he did not have to do so?

3) Could you have paid the 10 cents in person at the gate?

4) If you had your boarding pass rebooked at the gate, would you have been charged the 10 cents?

By the way, I am not sure, but I do not think DL has to collect the taxes, as long as they pay the taxes to the govt. I am not sure... but I am pretty sure the govt does not care where the money comes from so long as they get it.

Sprint did the same thing to me when sending me a final bill. The total was 2 cents. I called customer service and asked to have it waived. The nice girl on the other end said that unfortunately they had no way of doing this so I had to remit my 2 cent payment. Well, feeling that they needed as much aggravation as they were causing me, I remitted a 3 cent check. Now I show a 1 cent credit. I called them to ask for a refund and they said that they will process it, allthough it would take 1-2 billing cycles for me to receive it. Go figure!

Exactly. There is scant evidence that airlines actually collect any taxes from passengers; if they were able to pass along taxes, they would naturally pass along increased fuel costs, and all have failed at that. ;)

Some states have laws prohibiting merchants from paying sales taxes on behalf of customers (and failing to add it to the bill), but federal airfare taxes contain no such provisions. Airlines have to itemize the ticket for the passenger, but there's no law that prohibits airlines from just paying the tax.