occupying Wall Street since 1981

This is my story and hopefully people are urged not to fly Delta!

Christmas day 2012 I was in the ER with dehydration due to the stomach flu. I had two liters of fluid IV'd into me and plenty of nausea meds as well. The next day my wife and I were due to fly home, from Grand Rapids, MI to Atlanta, GA. We had a scheduled layover in Minneapolis. For anyone not familiar with the Minneapolis / St. Paul Airport, it is a very nice airport, but it is really really sprawling. Delta uses this airport as a hub, and it seems that connections are about as far away from one another as possible. Not surprisingly the airport had dozens of small mattresses for people stuck there so I suspect this airport has problems with connections pretty frequently.

Our flight from GRR was late due to weather and we landed around 7pm. Our flight was scheduled to depart MSP at 7:20pm so we booked it across the airport as quickly as we could (I was still terribly ill and could not run). When we arrived at the gate the woman began to issue me a new seat assignment, having presumably given our seats away already. Then, she suddenly said, well, "wait, I think the doors are closing right now. Yup, they just closed." It was 7:18. So two things were clear - she gave away our seats and she was unwilling to hold the door open for us, even until actual departure time. We were not alone - at least two other couples arrived at the same time and were turned away. Why were they not able to see that we had connecting flights and would be able to make the connection if they held the doors open for 1 minute. I guess that saying that they had an on-time departure is more important to Delta than customers.

The next flight, the last flight of the day, had 59 people on the standby list (a testament to the issues they have at MSP), no way we were getting one. So we were able to get on a flight from MSP to Chicago, and then to Atlanta early the next morning (the next direct flight was at 1pm). The gate agent gave us boarding passes for the flight to ORD and told us we were to get our boarding passes from ORD to ATL in Chicago. We also booked a room for the night - there was no way I could to stay in the airport overnight in my sick state.

The next morning we arrived in Chicago and attempted to get our boarding passes to ATL. One problem, they told us we didn't have a ticket. We had seat assignments, but we didn't have a "coupon" and our flight ended in Chicago. I don't understand how Delta's internal ticketing system works but I think it's safe to say that it DOESN'T. We waited for an agent, on the phone with corporate, to give us tickets. And we waited. And everyone boarded. And the agent said it was time to close the doors. And our plane took off without us. The second one of the trip due to Delta! My wife was crying, I was angry and yelling. And I was still very very sick! All I wanted to do was get home!

But we were told all the remaining flight to Atlanta were full for the day. Then, the next part of the odyssey is even worse from a customer service standpoint. We waited on the phone for over an hour to talk to a supervisor. He finally got us both, first class, on a 2pm flight. Great. I was able to see the seats on my Delta phone app. We then waited in a long line to get our boarding passes printed. When we got to the front and spoke the woman at the computer she told us we were not on the 2pm flight, but on the 5pm flight. They baited and switched on us! We immediately jumped on a phone and spoke to another supervisor. After another hour (literally) he got us back on the 2pm flight. While my wife was on the phone I walked over to the kiosk and tried, over and over again, to print the boarding passes but it would not work. More lies from Delta! I then waited in line to speak to  the woman at the computer again, while my wife was on the phone with the supervisor, until we had these tickets in hand. We waited another 45 min. for this. But we finally had them. This entire process lasted from 8:45am until after noon. I was tired, angry, dehydrated, hungry, sick. And Delta then didn't offer us anything except an upgrade to first class!

hmmm...I'm 50/50 between Democrat and Green Party.

a non-partisan firm studied who's plan benefits more people. the result, not surprisingly, is that Obama's plan benefits nearly everyone more.