Delta Air Lines’ phone service

Recently, I was booking some rather complicated air travel with our main air carrier, Delta Air Lines. I was doing this online and when I got close to the end of that rather arduous work, the airline wouldn’t accept my frequent flier account number.

This was an old recurring story that began after 9/11, when air travel security measures where tightened up; prior to that, I used the initials of my first name (as it appeared on my SkyMiles number) and after repeated attempts to correct it with the air carrier, their records never reflected the change.

So I was rather upset as I had secured good seats, just by the aircraft bulkhead, as we like them to be and was one more time rebuffed. Since I couldn’t do anything on line, I had to call and was told that my waiting time would be half an hour, so I postponed till the following morning.

At that point, when I called again, I had no choice but wait, and wait a very long time before I could speak with a human being. All told, it took me 45 minutes to get through. The agent got my problem partially resolved and I shared my frustration with her about having to wait for so long.

She simply replied “It’s the summer season and we’re extremely busy”. My answer was: “This not the first summer Delta is in operation, the airline knows that summer is busier than other times of the year, therefore it should staff its phone lines accordingly”

I asked her to pass my comments along to her management. She invited me instead to use Delta website for this. I guess you never win with the airlines!