Thanks to all for their suggestions and help. We are in attack mode today to try to get this resolved. As to the poster wondering why we didn't get higher prioity i for when the flight was "reinstated", we asked that yesterday and were told the "computer" isn't capable of sweeping back and seeing who they knocked off! I'll keep you posted. I was hoping a good night's sleep would calm me down on this but it hasn't!

MILESMOM Please add an e-mail contact address to your profile. Someone from NWA may be looking into your problem and may wish to contact you..... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

CO just did the same thing to me on an award reservation using NW miles!!

See this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum20/HTML/007119.html

OK gang, here's the latest on this saga. It's getting better in some ways, and not in others. After speaking to supevisors on both the reservation line and the Platinum line, we were given the same number for "customer relations"...612-726-2046(note this is not a toll free number). When you call this number you get three options, none of which really sounded like it applied to our sitution, so we picked the option that seemed closest to it. Got a nice guy and started explaining our situation yet again. He stopped us and said, I'm sorry but Customer Relations is only for problems resulting in past flights, you need to call reservations. We explained we'd gone that route and both supervisors had given this number to us. He said, well, we hear that alot but we can not help future travel situations. We discussed at length this whole senario. When we got to the point of saying we were particulary upset with everyone telling us that the overnight in Minneapolis would be at our own expense his reply just floored us..."we do run a business and that decision is purely economics". Of course it is, only it's OUR economics that's being hit from something we had nothing to do with. At this point we were just about ready to explode, and said isn' there ANYONE in NW who can cut through this maze. He put us on hold for quite a while and came back and connected us with Gwen(I use her name only because this was the only person encountered who seemed like she had authority or interest in trying to do anything). Once again we go through this, and again we're told that the original Memphis-Des Moines flight is oversold. But she does call Inventory Control, and voila...though they told her there were "2 seats available", she convinced them to put 3 of us on that flight on the 22d.Unfortunately there is no seat for the 4th. So hubby graciously said, let my wife and 2 kids go and I'll take the reroute to Minneapolis. They have told us he is NUMBER 1 on the priority list if space opens up but we won't know that until we start home that day. Gwen sent a confirming fax. So we're 3/4 better than we were though we aren't happy that one of us is still overnighting in Minneapolis and won't arrive home until Sunday morning. Nothing was said about who is picking up the tab for that and quite frankly we didn't want to push that issue until the other 3 seats were secured. We still do not plan on paying that expense considering the inconvenience, and pain in a** this has all been. Gwen did advise us to double check all of this every two weeks to be sure nothing is changed again(which doesn't make me feel very secure). She is however to be commended for at least trying to do something. There were a some interesting sidebars we learned: There are "2 groups" holding seats on the Memphis plane, which causes us to think that our 4 award seats were really knocked out to accomodate those group booking. We'll never know but it is curious. Second, we were repeatedly told the Memphis flight was oversold(though I could have bought tickets on Sunday), yet we now have 3 seats on it. I'm guessing unless there is a massive cancellation, people will be bumped from that flight(not likely since that is the end of Spring break here and we're all heading home) and with that being the last flight out to DSM that night, NW stands a good chance of paying compensation and overnight costs for bumped passengers. This doesn't help their "purely economic" line of thinking. Lastly, NW does NOT provide a tollfree number to Customer Relations and despite this number being given to us by both reservations and Plat. lines, those answering that number say they do not deal at all with problems relating to future travel. So that's the situation, I ruled busted our return for a specific day which cost us 68,000 extra miles and this is what we got...hours of frustration, 3 seats on an oversold flight, and 1 still spending the night in Minneapolis and still a fight as to who pays for this. I can't express how disappointed we are in the way NW has treated us in this situation. Obviously they take no responsibility truly to get passengers to their final destination on award tickets, and expect us to pick up attendant expenses when they don't. I understand the airline industry is suffering right now, but as a Silver Elite and Platinum Elite couple we still expected better. Big Lesson learned. Thanks to all for listening and making suggestions to us through this. If there are anyother updates I'll let you all know.

That is an amazing story.

One thing I have learned lately is that there is a big difference between elite agents.

Some just quote the rules to you and others go out of their way to help you.

I'm glad you finally found someone at NW that was willing to be the latter. I trust that everything will work out for you!

It is difficult to understand Northwest's aciton in this case as it is reported. But your constant contact is having some results, and you will be well served to call every other day about the "first on the waiting list" status. Perhaps a shorter, more succinct version of the story can serve for this purpose.

Although it is very difficult to do when you are absolutely sure you are in the right, as in this instance, it is always helpful to avoid the "fight mode" and to simply call and state the facts and then wait for the response. If the response is not satisfactory, ask to speak to the next level up. If they resist that, hang up and call again to get another agent. My point in not to criticize what you have done, but to observe that in the present economic environment airlines are (unwisely, one would think) treating customers perfunctorily and enforcing arbitrary decisions. Our best defense is calm, rational statement of facts, over and over as necessary, and to as many supervisors as necessary.

I certainly agree that trying to resolve this in a calm manner first is the way to go. In all our calls my husband prefaced his remarks by telling the person he knew that person hadn't actually made the offensive changes. And he's not a screamer. We really tried to be civil. But we did as you suggest and called back and called back, but got the same response over and over from different people. I think the most insulting thing was being told simply, sorry, you'll have to pay you own way in Minneapolis for the night...end of discussion. When you've had tickets since April, paid dearly in rulebust miles for your dates, and not even know about the schedule change made Dec 14th which landed us in Minneapolis instead of our final destination until you call for something else and hear "Oh by the way, we aren't getting you home", being calm and civil was a hard thing to do. Our persistance paid off, at least 3/4 of it anyway, it is just a shame it had to be such an ordeal. Again thanks to all of you who responded with encouragement and suggestions.

I think at a minimum, you should have the Rulebuster miles refunded, since NW effectively denied you the benefit of the Rulebuster award by taking away your seats that you Rulebusted to get. You might want to try writing a letter to NW asking for the Rulebuster miles back.

If they eventually pay the cost of overnighting in MSP, that would be great, but if they give you the Rulebuster miles back instead that is still a good gesture.

First sorry to drag the entire thread up, don't know how just to reference it. Thought I'd tell you all how this saga ended since we just got back last night. LeftDSM 3/12 for Msp/mem. No problem out of DSM. However when we got ready to board MSP the gate agent asked us where our tickets were. We said...these were etickets, we have none. Boarding passes on 3 of the 4 of us didn't show eticket and they were not going to board us. Referred us to another gate agent who looked at the massive record and told us that because of all the changes we no longer "had etickets". He said he didn't have time to mess with us, told the agent at the door just to let us board. We asked if this meant we would have problems in MEM in the morning for the flight to GCM. He said.. you got BIG problems. Didn't make us feel too great. Got back to MEM airport at 6am for 8:45 flight to see what needed to be done. Told the same thing there...because of all the rerouting, changes, etc we no longer had e tickets. This agent worked over an hour straightening it all out and printing tickets for the mem/gcm and what we needed to get back gcm/mem/dsm yesterday. Interesting however the tickets when printed had the old itinerary(gcm/dtw/msp/dsm) we hadn't had for months. He simply wrote across each one in red..."r/r"...said it stood for reroute and reschedule. At every point, at the gate in mem, checking in at gcm, boarding mem to dsm the agents looked at the tickets and questioned us. Bottom line, we had NO idea that we no longer had eticket or should have had those little green card ticket, none were ever mailed. We just had to laugh that it was the latest "screw up" in a LONG line of screw ups on this trip. But we got home! Just thought I'd let you all know what happened. We've flown on e tickets and never had a problem. But according to 3 separate NW gate/checkin agents changes will ultimately knock the eticket off the boarding pass and a green card is needed. Only hitch: NW doesn't tell you nor send them.

...so, how was the trip?

Great...came back rested and tanned...spent some great quality time with our two teens(far more than they would probably have liked) Even better...all the snow had melted here and it felt like spring today!Looking forward to booking more free tickets there for next spring break...keep your fingers crossed for us!