Your Compassionate policy is only trumped by your profit lust. Thanks you for having me take this precious time away from my mom to write this, and for cutting my trip short because you choose to poach people in a time of need. My mom wasn’t given extra time on this earth, thanks for taking part of what little is left from me also. You should be ashamed.
It’s something that’s part and parcel of the human condition. Family and loved ones grow ill and die. In many cases, we want to be to be with those we love, offering care and comfort in whatever way we can. It’s not easy to let go of someone we care deeply for…and it only seems reasonable to think that a business would refrain from making a customer’s time of bereavement any more difficult than it absolutely has to be. Unless that business is Delta Airlines.
Granted, the terms “airline industry” and “customer service” seem to be mutually exclusive, but when an airline such as Delta stands on policy when compassion would be far more appropriate…. Let’s just say that treating an already emotionally bereft customer with such dismissiveness and lack of compassion defies rational understanding…never mind simple human decency.
Lizz Winstead, one of the creators of The Daily Show, is someone who usually deals in comedy. She makes people laugh, and she’s good at it, which only makes reading her heart-rending account of her mistreatment at the hands of Delta Airlines doubly disturbing. All Winstead wanted to do was to be able to change her travel plans in order that she might be with her dying mother in Minnesota. Like any airline, Delta has a compassionate travel policy designed to assist travelers in times of emergency and/or bereavement. It’s designed to recognize the reality that sometimes, people need to be with their loved ones, and that normal procedures and profit considerations should be a lesser consideration.
Unfortunately, Winnstead ran across a Delta customer service agent for whom “compassion” seemed to be a foreign concept. The agent and her supervisor stated that there was NO WAY they could be of assistance- unless, of course, Winstead was willing to pay an $800 change fee. Most of us can recite stories of airlines subjecting them to all manner of ridiculousness in order to be granted the supreme privilege of boarding one of their cattle cars airplanes. NO one should ever have to endure what Lizz Winstead did as she was trying to get to her dying mother.
When I called your customer service in tears to ask if I can simply get the flight to Santa Cruz on the MN leg, so I can spend my mom’s final days with her, your Delta “supervisor” said the only way I can do that is if I pay 800 dollars. I was told you have NO WAY to help me, or to wave the fee. NO WAY…. Thanks Delta for the $600 dollar Medical airfare “deal” to get to Minneapolis and for the compassionate $800 dollar ticket change option to stay a bit longer with my mom and family.
Your Compassionate policy is only trumped by your profit lust.
Of course, I wasn’t privy to Winnstead’s interaction with Delta customer service, and there may well be more to this story. Even so, how difficult would it have been for Delta to recognize Winnstead’s exigent circumstances? Instead, Delta is now dealing with the fallout from the botching of what should have been a no-brainer. No one’s denying Delta their right to make a profit on the service they provide…but there are times when profit must and should be a secondary consideration. Winnstead wanting to be with her dying mother in her final hours would seem to be one of those times.
Instead of treating a customer facing an emotional and heart-wrenching loss with care and compassion, Delta chose to stand on “policy.” They could have done the right thing, created some good will, and shown that they care…about something more than profits. Instead, they chose to squeeze a grieving customer…and they just happened to choose a customer with the ability and the will to get her story out there. That I’m writing about it indicates should be taken as an indication of just how much Delta blew their opportunity to make a difference.
Delta could have done the right thing. No one would have been the wiser…but you can bet that they would be getting the reams of bad publicity they are now. Mission Accomplished…PR disaster achieved.
Nice work, y’all….
