As long as I'm complaining about the airlines today, then I might as well dig up an old email that I wrote to Delta airlines in 2003:---
2003-10-02
Attention: Delta Airlines, Customer Service
Subject : A Delta policy that I might as well call the “Delta would rather loose money and customers policy”
I’d like to provide an example of how your airline is loosing money and ultimately customers due to its processes surrounding customer service and the ability to change flight bookings.
Today I am sitting in the Jacksonville Florida airport awaiting a flight to Atlanta in order to catch a connecting flight to Toronto. The commute between Toronto and Florida is one that I have done every week for a year now. I have switched back and forth between other airlines and Delta several times, no airline has proven that they can get me back and forth each week with a high success rate. As I sit here I am considering moving back to one of the other airlines again because of the situation that I’ve encountered.
My flights for today :
- DL587 – departing Jacksonville at 7:40pm (up until this week has been 7:30pm), arriving at 8:50pm
- DL5520 – departing Atlanta at 9:40pm
The history of my frustrations with this particular connection :
Among other issues which I won’t get into in this particular letter (and believe me, with the amount of traveling I do I could go on for pages about the issues with Delta and other airlines), the flight leaving Jacksonville has been historically late leaving. This often has caused me to actually land in the Atlanta airport after they start boarding my connecting flight to Toronto, causing many problems with actually trying to make the connection. Although this is listed as a valid connection, the statistics show that there is a high probability that there are issues in making this connection. This is especially true when the flight is now as of this week to be scheduled to leave 10 minutes later then it used to.
My Frustrations Tonight :
So why am I so frustrated tonight? I’m not frustrated over the fact that I run the chance of getting stuck, this is the risk that I have every week that I take this flight. I am frustrated that with the clear ability to be able to do something about my connection today to reduce the risk of missing my flight, Delta airlines has decided not to.
I was at the airport early enough tonight that I could have taken a 6:10pm flight to Atlanta, and was willing to pay the $25 change fee (I could write a whole other letter about change fees). This earlier flight would not get me home to Toronto sooner because my second segment would remain the same, which was ok with me because at least it would reduce the risk of a missed connection. Upon requesting this at the check-in desk I was told that they could only make changes to my flight if the second segment could also be moved to an earlier flight (Due to a Delta policy that I might as well call the “Delta would rather loose money and customers policy”). This seems ridiculous that Delta would not attempt to :
1. Provide customer satisfaction
2. Receive a $25 change fee
3. Reduce the risk of having to pay additional money to put me up in a hotel for the night if the connection is missed
4. Retain a customer who travels every week (I wonder how much money that is that has been lost)
It seems to me that Delta tonight threw away a win-win situation. Maybe I’m just one customer, maybe my flight from Jacksonville will arrive on-time tonight (I’m keeping my fingers crossed) but they have lost any amount of customer satisfaction that I had left with them, possibly lost me as a customer as I continue to travel this route every week and lost the opportunity to make money off of me on a change fee.
In today’s economy and the state that the airlines all seem to find themselves in, I would think that Delta would be attempting to keep customer satisfaction, keep customers from going to an alternate airline and take every opportunity to make money and reduce the risk of having to spend more money (hotel accommodations).
A final thought :
Next week as I travel once again from Jacksonville to Toronto I’ll be checking in at the check-in desk of a different airline instead, but I’ll be sure to wave hello to the customer service agents at the Delta desk who dealt with me this week, the customer service agents who could not provide customer service, who lost a customer, who lost some money for Delta.
I suggest you review your policy and examine how it effects your bottom line.