Last night I had what I would probably consider my worst experience with Customer Service. Back in February I had to cancel a flight to Gerogia that I had booked through Orbitz on Delta Airlines. The airline refused to give me any sort of refund and instead credited my account so that I could use it towards another flight within a year. I decided to fly to Florida in June to visit a few friends that live there. While looking at flights yesterday the prices were pretty good so I decided it was the time to book. Orbitz's website told me that in order to book a flight with canceled flight credit I would need to call their Customer Service. I spoke to three Orbitz representatives before I was informed that I would need to talk directly to Delta. They gave me Delta's phone number and the record locator I would need. I called Delta with the expectation that booking my flight would be a breeze from there.
My call was answered very quickly, which I was pleasantly surprised by. However, that's where the pleasant part of my experience with Delta ended. The representative asked me for my airline ticket number and I began to give him the number that Orbitz had given me. He interrupted me part of the way through and told me that it was not the right number, that the number he asked for would start with "062." I had my confirmation email from Orbtiz pulled up on my computer and found a number that said "Airline Ticket Number" but it did not start with "062." I informed the representative that I had a number by that name but that it started with "767." The representative then became rude and told me that he needed the Airline Ticket Number, not the Record Locator because the date of the canceled flight had already passed. I informed him that the only numbers I had were the ones I had tried to give him. Again, the representative was rude and I asked to speak to his supervisor. Instead of passing me on, he asked me WHY I wanted to speak to his supervisor. I told him that I felt he was being extremely rude when I was trying to find the information that he was asking me for. The representative THEN told me that he needed this information in order to process my request and that I needed to stop telling him how to do his job. I informed the representative that I was not trying to tell him how to do his job, but that I don't work for an airline and therefore don't know what all of the codes mean and was looking through my email to try to find the number he was asking for. In the middle of that statement, the "customer service" representative hung up on me!
At this point, I'm pretty angry. Being assertive is not something I have always been good at, and in the past I probably would have started crying when being treated so terribly. I can be rude if I need to be, but I did my best to remain calm and try to explain to this representative what I was looking at. Apparently that warranted being hung up on. I called Delta back and was thankfully assisted by a different representative. I informed this representative that I had been hung up on during my last call and she apologized but asked no details about what happened. I did get my flight booked, thankfully, and it turns out the Airline Ticket Number I was trying to give the last representative was the correct one after all. Apparently they drop off the "062" on all the numbers since they all start with that. I wish there was a way to call back said representative and actually tell him how to do his job. Instead I wrote a complaint to Delta Airlines this morning and assured them that I would never fly through their airline again. The only reason I called back and booked through them after my experience with rude representative was because I already had $400 wrapped up in my canceled flight from February. I have to say that I was extremely disappointed with the service I was given and the way I was treated. When posting about my experience on my Facebook page I got comments from others saying they have also had negative experience with Delta. All of these reasons, my friends, are why I will never fly Delta again. Please feel free to pass this blog on to any of your family or friends and encourage them to do the same!
