Crazy Delta Rules
 

I'm new to this site. I became curious after seeing a work colleague gazing all day at it.

I'm curious for opinions from the experts. In the archived section of www.webflyer.com, there's an article about crazy rules. One Delta rule seems particularly crazy.

"Delta SkyMiles: It is a violation of SkyMiles program rules to divulge your Delta PIN to a third-party business"

I'm sure many of you have used one of the mileage management schemes out there. Would Delta consider shutting down a SkyMiles account over a rule that many members don't know about. (including myself - I didn't find out about it 'til now)

The way I see it....Delta was trying to do me a favor. I signed up for just such a (free) consolidated mileage report program. It's perfectly useless....as I just got a statement showing my year-to-date base mile balance on DL as 0. Gee....they're only about 10,000 miles and 3 months behind http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif .

Whatever the rule says, the practical reality is that Delta is not going to close your account because you've used one of the mileage summary services. This "rule" is just a way of encouraging you not to publish your pin in the Wall Street Journal, etc. Its like the rule that your bank might have that only you can use your ATM card or something. If you let your spouse use your ATM card, nothing is going to happen, unless you later make a claim the card was stolen, etc.

My guess is that it's so they don't have to compensate you if one of those businesses uses your PIN to rip you off.

This is an attack on Yodlee and other information integrators.

For example, you can create a agent that goes to all the websites where you have an account and get all of the information that you have on a consolidated report. It might pose a security risk, but if you trust the company that is collecting the information and they will own up to any misuse, then it should not be a concern to my accountholders.

Delta needs to do this to protect themselves. Your PIN is a security step and can be used to do lots of things to your account. They do not want to be cleaning things up after you give that pin to someone else, company, friend, etc.