The Un-Friendly Skies
Turns out the Delta person I talked to on the phone yesterday lied to me, or at least didn't know what she was talking about. I had in my posession what they call "paper vouchers" and she thought I was talking about "evouchers". Roughly speaking, a paper voucher is something that is worthless unless you care to haul your butt to an airport or "ticket office" (the closest one is in Chicago i think). An e-voucher on the other hand, is something "they only started doing recently". Despite the similar names, there is no way to transfer one to the other.
I spent almost on hour on hold and speaking to Delta agents & supervisor last night, trying to get them to let me book my tickets over the phone or internet and pay for it with the "paper voucher" i had. These have a document number on them which I argued must be stored in some database somewhere that they could look up. This is apparently not the case. If you have a good printer and some cardboard stock, I recommend you start printing your own "paper vouchers" since they have no way of verifying their authenticity via these phantom "document numbers. At this point I decided to go ahead and put a hold on the tickets since the airfare wasn't that bad ($428 and I had $400 in vouchers). Of course that means I have to go to the airport today. I'm pretty busy today. So I woke up at 4:45 and drove to Sea-Tac, waited in line about 15 minutes, and was eventually told that I could only get $250 in credit towards my ticket since the kind Delta agents at Orlando had the foresight to give us two separate vouchers ($250 and $150) which cannot be combined with any other voucher. So my price just went from $28 to $178, or about a 600% increase. The remaining voucher expires on Jul 12, so I asked if there was any way I could get an extension for it. The woman at the counter informed me I should call Customer Care. I pointed out that Customer Care has no idea what I'd be talking about since these "Document Numbers" are stored nowhere and cannot be verified, so how could they make any changes to my document. She recommended I talk to them and could mail them in to get them extended. If there's one thing I can't wait to do, it's be on hold with delta for another half an hour, and then be told they can't help me.
The worst part of all this is that I have "paper tickets" rather than etickets, which means when I go on this trip, I will yet again have to wait in line at the Delta ticket counter. I really don't like waiting in lines.
Admittedly, it was clearly printed on the vouchers that a) they had to be redeemed at a ticket office and b) they couldn't be combined. But I don't like those rules anymore than I like driving to the airport at 5 in the morning. I got home at 6:30 and went for a run, then went right to work. Now I'm tired. But at least I have tickets to go home for 7/4.
I spent almost on hour on hold and speaking to Delta agents & supervisor last night, trying to get them to let me book my tickets over the phone or internet and pay for it with the "paper voucher" i had. These have a document number on them which I argued must be stored in some database somewhere that they could look up. This is apparently not the case. If you have a good printer and some cardboard stock, I recommend you start printing your own "paper vouchers" since they have no way of verifying their authenticity via these phantom "document numbers. At this point I decided to go ahead and put a hold on the tickets since the airfare wasn't that bad ($428 and I had $400 in vouchers). Of course that means I have to go to the airport today. I'm pretty busy today. So I woke up at 4:45 and drove to Sea-Tac, waited in line about 15 minutes, and was eventually told that I could only get $250 in credit towards my ticket since the kind Delta agents at Orlando had the foresight to give us two separate vouchers ($250 and $150) which cannot be combined with any other voucher. So my price just went from $28 to $178, or about a 600% increase. The remaining voucher expires on Jul 12, so I asked if there was any way I could get an extension for it. The woman at the counter informed me I should call Customer Care. I pointed out that Customer Care has no idea what I'd be talking about since these "Document Numbers" are stored nowhere and cannot be verified, so how could they make any changes to my document. She recommended I talk to them and could mail them in to get them extended. If there's one thing I can't wait to do, it's be on hold with delta for another half an hour, and then be told they can't help me.
The worst part of all this is that I have "paper tickets" rather than etickets, which means when I go on this trip, I will yet again have to wait in line at the Delta ticket counter. I really don't like waiting in lines.
Admittedly, it was clearly printed on the vouchers that a) they had to be redeemed at a ticket office and b) they couldn't be combined. But I don't like those rules anymore than I like driving to the airport at 5 in the morning. I got home at 6:30 and went for a run, then went right to work. Now I'm tired. But at least I have tickets to go home for 7/4.
posted by Paul at
5:37 PM
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