Monday, July 5, 2010

How do I hate Delta? Let me count the ways.

Tomorrow we're going to Las Vegas to meet our dearest Brazilian friends, Gisele and Flavio and their girls. I just received my Delta check-in email and thought I'd get on top of things and get us checked in online.

We have a Delta American Express card, and one of the relatively new benefits of this card is that when you book a Delta ticket and pay for it with the Amex, you and something like up to 8 of your traveling companions get a free checked bag. No small deal when it's $23 per bag to check (for checking in online; it's more at the terminal).

Even though I booked the tickets for Mom, Mac and me on my Delta Amex, the Delta online check-in system wouldn't let me get the checked bags for free.

So I called Delta who said I needed to call Delta Amex.

Guess what?

I'm not the primary cardholder and so the benefit doesn't extend to me as a "secondary" account holder. Even if Jimmy had booked the tickets on his Amex on our behalf, the benefit wouldn't apply because he's not traveling with us. Once again, I am relegated to second-class citizen status and I am furious.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to stuff all of Mac's stuff in a legal-size carry-on and I'm going to stuff all my stuff in a legal-size carry-on and we are going to march on that airplane with all our carry-ons and backpacks.

And then I am going to get the primary cardholder on our account to call those ridiculously saccharine people at Delta American Express and cancel the cards.

If you see Mac and me at the Charleston or Atlanta airports tomorrow, you'll recognize us in several ways:
- we'll have lots of trailing carry-on luggage;
- we'll be bulked up because we're each wearing a weeks' worth of underwear, socks and outer clothes under our traveling outfit; and
- we'll be with my very serene mother who has not gotten nearly as indignant as she should be about the way Delta is treating me and who is therefore checking her bag and won't be encumbered like Mac and I will be.

Delta and all its related companies are going to make me have a stroke.

1 comment:

Molly said...

That is beyond ridiculous...though what should I expect from Delta. Yes, they are the same airilne I flew with my peanut-allergic son. We went through all the proper documentation channels when purchasing the tix, but for the second leg of our trip, they had no idea. Still 10 minutes after I informed the attendant of his allergy, the same woman came and offered my child a bag of peanuts AND a Reeses peanut butter cup. I am not kidding. They gave me 10,000 Skymiles, but they are idiots. And it's scary how a company can be so across-the-board incompetent.