We had decently priced tickets lined up, but we needed a day to be able to put them on the appropriate credit card for the bonus miles and ability to not have to pay for baggage. In that day the price of our tickets doubled. That sucks, but it happens. With a fair amount of work we were able to get close to our original price by accepting a messed-up routing that meant we had to drive 6 hours to & from the airport and fly to Milwaukee through Atlanta. That puts us at about an 18 hour travel day.
That isn't even the bad part!
When I checked in online I was notified that the flight from Atlanta to Milwaukee was oversold and Delta wanted to know how much money I'd take to get bumped. This wasn't an agreement to get bumped, just a warning and an attempt on Delta's part to maybe save some money. If they have to force you off the flight they have to give you $400 and possibly throw in a few more things. No problem for us yet.
We drove down to Salt Lake City and when we checked in the automated terminal I was asked if I wanted to re-book any of my flight....for a fee. The ATL-MKE flight was still oversold at this point and I sure as hell wasn't going to pay for the privilege of saving Delta the headaches involved with bumping someone.
We went to one of Delta's ticketing agents and explained the situation. We had seats on an oversold flight and were willing to get re-booked now. Our plans were somewhat flexible in that our final destination was between Milwaukee and Chicago. There were quite a few options to take us from Salt Lake City:
- SLC-MSP-MKE
- SLC-ORD
- SLC-MSP-ORD
- SLC-ATL-ORD
Those are just the ones I could come up with on the fly. There are several airports I'm sure I'm missing.
Doesn't matter, they don't want to re-book us on a different flight that would help them out. When we get to Atlanta we notice there is another flight leaving for Chicago pretty much the same time as our flight to Milwaukee. We get in line to talk to the gate agent and when we get to the head of the line she announces to those in line that she has to leave and another agent will come around "eventually". She then leaves for a few minutes and then comes back to putter around behind the desk but not help anyone.
You would think that in their home airport Delta would have enough Gate agents.
By the time someone else does come along it is too late to switch planes and we have to wait while they try to get six people to volunteer to get bumped for a $400 voucher and a hotel room. At this point we'd tried a couple times to allow Delta to re-route us to one of two destination airports without any recompense. Instead they chose to shell out $2400 and six hotel rooms.
Did I mention that the ATL-MKE flight was a couple hours late?
Epic Fail Delta......
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