Delta, you did it again
Hey Delta, you are like a great airline that I really love, only opposite. This past Sunday you did it again. If there is one goal I am going to accomplish in 2005, it is to take my 75K miles a year of expensive tickets and use it on another airline. Any other airline.
I was in Atlanta this weekend with my 2 year old daughter visiting my parents. On Sunday morning I was checking in around 9:30. I had one bag and the booster seat. The bag was kind of heavy and when I weighed it at my parents house I knew it would be very close to the 50 pound limit for bags. So this is how the check in process went.
- I walked up and received a very cold welcome from the lady behind the counter. No big deal. She deals with passengers all the time so she is probably pretty miserable.
- I had checked in at the kiosk so all I had to do was give her my two pieces of check-in stuff, a black pull bag and Emily?s car seat. My parents were keeping Emily occupied elsewhere so she was not with me.
- The ticket agent then asked to see Emily. Not sure why, but she did. So I had to signal for my parents to bring her over. As they were walking up, the agent was taking her booster seat and putting in on the conveyer belt, which made my daughter upset and she started to cry.
- I then put the bigger bag on the pass-through and the lady looked down at the scale. It was 53 pounds. 3 pounds over the limit.
- The woman looked at me and said ?It is over the limit, you will need to reduce the weight by 3 pounds?. Now, I cannot argue with her. Well, I can, but decided not to, because according to the rules, it was the over the limit. So there I was, crying daughter in my arms, my parents standing there, busy airport, looking at her like ?You have got to be joking??? Well, she was not joking.
- Having the foresight that Delta is evil and they would get me even if it was 1 ounce over, I asked to borrow a small bag from my parents and brought it in with me to the airport. I then gave my daughter back to my mother, opened up the big bag, took a pair of sneakers out, and put them into the other bag. That brought the weight back down to 50 pounds.
- So I checked one additional bag. To make a point, the ticket agent increased the amount of bags that someone at Delta has to handle. They do not care that I am gold medallion, and could just give me a break. No. They do not think about that because I was 3 pounds over the limit. When I flew on United and American this past year with my wife and daughter, I had bags that were over. The person checking me in let it slide because it was not over by a lot, it was in a bag that is easy to handle, and I had a family and the airline actually appreciated me for flying them and their motto is not ?Who needs damn customers?.
Delta, you are a joke. I know you will say things like ?we strive to reach the highest level of customer satisfaction possible? and ?our agents are trained to abide by strict rules governing bag weight limits? and ?we do not care about you because you will fly us no matter what so shut it or we will make it worse?. I wish there were other choices on the east coast that I could use. There are, but they are less convenient than you. But like I said, my goal in 2005 is to give my money to someone else. Goodbye. Again.
Comments