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Delta bait and switch: airline puts passenger on a connecting flight after he buys a nonstop
Airfarewatchblog
Delta bait and switch: airline puts passenger on a connecting flight after he buys a nonstop
Posted by George Hobica on Thursday, October 25, 2007
When Lew Davis, an educator based in New York City, saw a $138 RT fare from New York JFK to Denver on a nonstop flight for peak Christmas travel (leaving a few days before Christmas and coming back just after New Year's Day), he naturally jumped on it.
Even better, the flight left JFK at a reasonable hour in the morning, giving him plenty of time to get to the airport.
But he was in for a surprise: a couple of weeks ago, Delta called him and told him he was now on a flight leaving JFK around 6 AM, and he'd have to make a connection both coming and going. Worse, Davis is now flying on regional jets, instead of a big jet.
Naturally, he's not pleased. There are still seats left on the Delta nonstop, but they're selling for over $600 RT for Davis' itinerary. It's pretty clear what happened here: Delta kicked Davis off of the nonstop, and will now sell seats at a much higher fare than he paid to last minute purchasers.
Why we need airline regulation
Can you imagine any other industry getting away with this garbage? Imagine if you bought a TV from Best Buy and then, 2 months later, someone calls you to explain that they're substituting a TV of much lesser value. "We'll be over in a hour to swap it out."
Or you sit down to a restaurant, waiting for your rib eye, and the waiter explains that the restaurant just ran out of steak, and another diner has offered to pay more for your meal. So you're going to get a hamburger instead. For the same price as rib eye (I'm equating connecting flights with hamburger, as you can see). This is BS. There really ought to be a law. And I mean a law, passed by Congress.
I can understand, maybe, if Delta had scrubbed nonstop flights from their JFK DEN schedule. But this is not the case.
Too many airlines are getting away with too much of this sort of thing. Another example is when they do in fact scrub a flight from their schedule, forcing travelers to buy much more expensive fares at the last minute. In these cases, airlines should honor the original fare, even if they have to find seats on another airline.
Has this sort of thing happened to you? Feel free to leave a comment.
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All in all, a miserable flight experience. I, of course, got nothing in return from the airline.
A few days later, I received an automated e-mail message from Delta's reservation system. It contained two new e-tickets for different flights. One arriving more than 5 hours later in New York, invalidating my prepayed and non-refundable tickets for the broadway show. However, the original flights were still available on delta.com, albeit for a higher price.
I immediately called their reservations office and requested to be put back on the original flight. The reservations agent claimed this was impossible, even though the flight was still available online, an was using unchanged equipment.
I sent Delta a complaint through their website, again requesting to be put back on the original flight. Two weeks later: no response. I called Delta reservations again and again requested to be put back on the original flight. Not possible according to the reservations agent as no similar booking classes were available.
Finally, I did manage to acquire seats on an earlier flight, leaving the evening prior to our scheduled arrival. Unfortunately, this change required us to book an extra nights stay at our hotel. It seems no more than fair that Delta covers these costs as I had to choose to forget about prepayed, non-refundable tickets to the broadway show (value approx $300) or the extra hotel night (approx $250).
I reviewed their contract of carriage and came to the conclusion that they could not call this a schedule change or schedule irregularity. They also do not have the right to cancel a confirmed reservation. The only rule that applies to this change is the overbooking rule that calls for Delta to pay compensation.
I resend my complaint to Delta. Being put back on the original flight was not an option at this point in time as we had already booked the extra hotel night and made other arrangements to leave a day early.
I therefore requested overbooking compensation. Today, after approximately two weeks, delta replied to me that they do not compensate for schedule changes. Again, this is not a schedule change. The original flights are still scheduled, unchanged, with unchanged equipment and even at this point in time, a few days prior to departure, seats are still available.
I will escalate this case and also notify the DOT as Delta clearly attempts to violate bumping regulations by pre-bumping and calling it a schedule change, which it is not.
For all of my future travel plans, I will be first checking with American, and I will fly Delta only if no other options exist.
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Case 1: Nonstop trip from Florida to Utah. They send the bags to NYC purposely because the plane is overweight. Okay, I am too happy about that, but safety first right? The airline knew this in advance. Waited for three hours getting the run around at the airport. Finally they tell us after three hours of eating bad food and generally starting a ski vacation without clothes or toiletry. They finally deliver the bag at 3am!
Case 2: Booked for a flight to Montana through Atlanta. I know that airport and so planned a two hour layover. They call a month after I paid for the tix to say that they will change the flights. I explain that forty minutes layover of the new flights are not enough. Sorry. Cannot refund or change to different flight of my choice without severe penalty. Guess what? Just made the connection, but of course the bags are still in Atlanta. Several hours on the phone, trips to a local store to get basics, and I am still waiting.
I will gladly pay more for better service. I will take my chances with someone other than Delta.
I also didn't mind that there were 3 flights to get there and that it was code shared between United, Lufthansa and USairways.
Pit/bos/fra/fdh going...fdh/fra/phl/pit back.
Today, I received email notification that there was a schedule change to my itenerary. My last leg of 3 flights coming back was being changed. This would give me a 4 hour layover instead of 1:50! I looked on-line and saw that my original last leg was still available.....so I called Cheaptickets.
At first, they said I had an illegal connection time(too short at 1hr 50 min). But, I asked why they couldn't put me on another flight....2 existed before the one they scheduled me on. Next they said that Lufthansa only code-shared with the later flight time and not the earlier with the same carrier. I challenged them on that. I then gave them options that were suitable to me......fly through another city, fly on another code share, etc.....I had 3 websites pulled up on my computer and new what other options were available.
After 1 1/2 hours on the phone, they somehow agreed that I could stay on the original flight ......but now I don't have a confirmed seat! There are only 3 seats left on the plane!
That employee should be fired, for giving his/her own company a black eye and costing it business. I had taken the original story with a grain of salt, but DeltaAgent's protestations have made me a firm believer. Way to shoot your own company in the foot. Wow.
I am having all my family up to visit us for Christmas. My father hates to fly and is always the most difficult to get anywhere. Well, I managed to book him a direct flight from Orlando to Boston, for December 23rd (peak time, obviously) for about $300. He lives in Ft. Myers but was willing to drive to get the nonstop afternoon flight. Plus the cost was pretty good for a roundtrip, coming back the 28th of December.
Now, we already PAID for the tickets, had confirmations (from Delta) in hand, and so on. I even double-checked it with Delta on the phone, because the email confirmation took overnight to show up. Then what does Delta do? Informs us a week later that now he has to fly through Atlanta AND leave 3 hours earlier in the day! They also changed his return flight by more than 3 hours.
When we called to insist we had reservations specifically to coincide with other family members flying in from all over, we couldn't believe what Delta told us. They actually said that they had the RIGHT to change our flights whenever they deemed it necessary, NOT SIMPLY WHEN IT WAS CANCELLED. As my father forced the customer service person to admit, Delta apparently no longer sells confirmations, they sell "suggestions." They also could not tell us why it became necessary to change his flights three months ahead of time, when his original was still available (and still is). Do they know something about the weather that we don't? Of course not. They want to save those choice seats to sell to frazzled, hard up last minute travelers.
We called back twice more, asking for the next supervisor in the off chance that the first person had no idea what they were talking about. But the supervisors told us the same thing. Delta reserves the right to boot us or change our flights for ANY reason. They actually said that! Not because of cancellations, not because of overbooking, but for "any reason." Then she said, "Well, it's a busy time of year, we need to be able to move people around if we want to." What?? Then what on earth am I paying for?
For those of you that work "in the airline industry" and insist it doesn't happen, why don't you tell me just what your position is, then I'll decide if you are even aware of what your whole company is doing. After all, I can't imagine you are the expert on all booking practices if you are in, say, front counter ticketing!
Thankfully, the new SkyBus airline had opened up their Ft.Myers-Portsmouth leg that week, and we immediately cancelled the Delta flight and booked on SkyBus. This is even better, since my father can leave from his own town, and lands in my town rather than the huge Logan airport in Boston. Obviously, SkyBus could surprise us too with a change but they seem a little less likely, since they fly only a few routes anyway.
Delta even gave us some trouble about the refund, but finally gave in since their policy stated that if flights were changed by 3 hours or more, we were entitled to a refund. I likewise have many frequent flier miles on Delta and frankly, before this last year, I had no problems like this (and I flew Boston to Honolulu all the time for Navy purposes). Now, I am seriously wondering if someone new has come along in management. When did they decide that bait-and-switch would work and no one would notice?