Delta Complaint
Submitted by: Anonymous | Post a complaint | Back to Complaints Forum
On July 27, 2019, my 83-year-old mom and I arrived at the PDX (Portland, Oregon)
airport at 11:40 am for a flight that left at 1:18 pm with a final destination of TSR (Timisoara,
Romania). We were in the check-in line within a few minutes and I asked one of your Delta
employees if we were in the correct line. He told us we should check in at the kiosks. My mom
told him she had requested wheelchair assistance and that she usually cannot check in at the
kiosk for that reason. He told us to use the kiosks anyway. We went through the process at the
kiosks and they checked me in, charging me $100.00 for my 2nd checked bag. The kiosk gave
my mom a message, however, that she must check in with an agent. We got back in line (I
could not leave her in line alone to handle her own baggage while I went to Baggage Drop) and
by the time we got to the counter the agent told us we were 7 minutes too late to meet the check
in deadline of 1 hour before the flight takes off. We were unaware of this deadline. ( Believe me,
we will never forget this deadline again!) The agent got on the phone for a few minutes and then
told us that Delta could not rebook us because of the nature of our ticket, and that we had to talk
to the travel agency who booked it for us. We promptly called the travel agent to see what could
be done. Three long holds, in which I was told an agent would help me, each ended with an
answering machine. On the fourth call, I asked them to please make sure that did not happen
again. I was then placed on another 20-25 minute hold which ended with the agent coming on to
tell me that the best they could do would be to charge us $300.00 each for a ticket change fee,
PLUS the difference in fare. The best ticket she could find for departing in the entire month of
August was over $4,000.00 each.
The money we had used for our original tickets was kindly donated by friends because
one of the main purposes of our trip is to work with children. We have meetings scheduled with
100 – 150 children beginning August 3, 2019. Because we need to be there by August 3, we
believed we had no choice but to find our own tickets online. A kind stranger helped us for over
an hour to begin to accomplish finding affordable tickets online, and then helped us again later
that evening. Without this help, I don’t know what we would have done to resolve the issue! As
we were busy doing all this, our flight boarded and took off, of course, making it look like we
were a “no-show.” We ended up needing to buy several one-way tickets, using different bank
cards and money transfers between our 2 accounts, to pool our resources to afford this, and we
had to also dip into other donated funds for the expenses of our children’s work in Romania. My
bank card was frozen in the process because my phone battery was dying and we had to use
someone else’s phone for the purchases, which raised a red flag to the bank. We were at the
airport until 8:00 pm, working on resolving all of this, and then waiting for my husband to come
from Tillamook, Oregon (2 hour drive each way) to take us home once we were sure we were
not going to be leaving that day. A friend had dropped us off at the airport on her way back
home to Washington state, so my husband had to come from home to get us again. During the
many hours at the airport, I was trying to handle 2 large carts of our luggage, my 83-year-old
mom in her wheelchair, my phone which needed to be plugged in 3-4 times at a station where there was not room for our luggage carts and wheelchair, so I was forced to walk back and forth
to complete phone tasks with the bank, family, etc. The bathroom and places to eat were quite a
distance from us also. It was VERY DIFFICULT to say the least!
After returning home, I spent 1 1⁄2 days at the computer and on the phone finalizing the
new flights, searching through my email an online and printing out pages and pages of
information we need for our new flights, straightening out my bank card business, shuffling
funds, etc… and we still only had flights TO Romania, not back home. A Delta agent finally
made arrangements for us to have the return portion of our flight (TSR – PDX on Sept 3, 2019)
restored to us. We thank you! However, I was told by more than one person in the travel
industry that it was Delta’s responsibility to rebook our flights because we were given incorrect
information by a Delta employee, which cost us the time that resulted in our being late for the
check-in deadline. If your company had rebooked us, it would have saved us SO much money,
time and stress!
What would you like the company to do to fix the problem? (optional)
To refund the original price of the first ticket. Reimbursement Request to Delta Airlines 7-30-19
$1574.36
See attached bank statements for the cost incurred to book our own flights from PDX to
TSR plus extra expenses incurred because we were refused check-in on 7-27-19. This
total also includes the $100 I paid for the extra suitcase when I checked in at the kiosk
on 7-27, plus $10 that I spent on luggage carts on 7-27 that I will need to pay again
during our check-in for the new flights on 7-31.
$30.00 +
$56.00
Difference I will be required to pay for my extra checked bag. ($30 above the original
$100 I would have paid for the flights PDX to PHX to FRA to OTP…and $56 for the
flight OTP to TSR because it is an overnight layover and I will be required to reclaim
my luggage and recheck it, paying another excess baggage fee…(Not to mention the
hassle of handling 3 large suitcases, 2 carry-ons, 2 personal items, 2 medical
devices and my 83 yr old Mom in a wheelchair for that overnight lay-over)
$50
Extra gasoline expenses incurred for my husband to come from our home in Tillamook,
Oregon to PDX to pick my mom and I up and take us home on 7-27-19 ( a friend had
brought us to the airport then proceeded to her home in Washington state) then to bring
us back to PDX on 7-31-19 for the new flight.
Total Reimbursement Request :
$1710.36