It’s 2010, when many people thought we would have entered the future where toasters will cook the weather onto our toast, transportation will be clean and efficient, and computers and instant communication would solve all our problems. On January 3rd, my international flight was delayed 24 hours.
I guess one of the lights on a wing broke and it took that long to get the part in from Denver. That happens, after 2 hours, we had all missed our connections anyway. NWA was kind and gave me a $500 travel credit voucher for the trouble.
“That’s great,” I thought, “I’ll be taking a $500 Delta flight in June!” I’ll just go onto the website and punch in this document number. It’ll credit my account with the money and -
Nope. It says I have to call an Agent. Why do the agents have a different system than the website? No clue. It’s alright though, I have Skype. I’ll call an agent. They’ll use their system and they’ll schedule the fli-
Nope. They say they can’t find the number because they’re merging the Northwest and Delta systems. That’s fine. Mergers between massive conglomerates using different systems are bound to have problems and they say it should be resolved in a week. I’ll call back next week to reserve.
A week later, I’ll call up and there is no longer any merger problems. Great! The agent should able to find this document number without any proble-
Nope. It’s not in the computer. After half an hour of trying to figure out exactly what the documents I have even are (seriously, I read every damn code on the paper to her), she tells me my only option is to go to a Delta ticket counter. Why do the ticket counters have a different system than the phone agents and website? I don’t know.
Lets see, the nearest Delta ticket counter is in Bangkok. The Bangkok airport is 2 hours away. That’s alright, I’m flying next month, I’ll just redeem it when I’m there-
Nope. The Bangkok counter is open from 3 am to 5 am. (That tells me that the people working there are probably employees of some other airline that just check people in. The odds that they will recognize this apparently obscure voucher and know what to do especially including the language barrier? Pretty close to nil.)
Well Ms. Agent, Can you reserve the flight and just let me pay for it when I get to the US in June?
Yes, but the ticket will probably cost twice as much, completely negating the use of the voucher.
Essentially, I have learned that this $500 credit voucher is useless. I do have to say though, I was quite impressed with how incredibly helpful the agent was.