Last December, my wife Peggy and I went on a wonderful vacation to the United States. We travelled to Washington, D.C. to visit family, flew to San Francisco and took a car along Highway 1 on to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, a skiing resort in Colorado all the way to Denver, CO. From there, we planned to fly on to Atlanta, GA.

Because weather conditions were quite bad, we missed our Delta flight No. 1908 on Dec 19. So we had to purchase two new new tickets for a flight on Dec 20.

The gentleman at the desk told me before handing him my credit card, that the price of the new ticket would be 200 USD each, and I agreed. Usually, when paying by credit card, you get to sign before your card is charged. Not here – he returned the card and said we’re all set and passed me the new tickets.

After reviewing my ticket I saw on page 2 an indication of the price of USD 409.50, so I went back to the counter and asked the salesman if there was a mistake, because I assumed the price to be 200 USD for each ticket. He explained that everything was correct, because my original ticket price would be taken into account, so this would just show the total for the new ticket without my old price, and I was correctly charged 200 USD for each ticket, as the passenger receipt shows.

The „PASSENDER RECEIPT“ also said that the USD 200.00 is „…THE TOTAL OF ANY … SERVICE CHARGES OR FEES … INCLUDING ANY DIRECT TICKET CHARGE INCLUDED IN THE FARE …“, so I assumed this to be correct.

A few weeks later back in Germany, I received my credit card account statement, which now indicated that Delta twice charged me 415 USD.

MORE THAN TWICE OF WHAT I AGREED TO!

So I called Delta’s customer service in Atlanta (mind the phone bill), and I was told that the 200 USD was only the administrative charges, and the total was indeed 415,00 calculated by adding the 409.50 ticket price + 200.00 administrative charges – 195.51 of my original tickets incl. taxes + fees.

When I sent a fax to Delta explaining in detail what had happened, I just received a response basically saying the tickets were non-refundable and everything was calculated correctly. The one thing they didn’t mention with one word was that enough:

I WAS TOLD SOMETHING ELSE.

If the clerk made a mistake in communicating the total price, then it’s irrelevant if he correctly calculated the fare internally: he sold it to me for 200 Dollars, not for 415, and I bought it for 200 Dollars, not 415.

So I wrote Delta another fax, asking them about the fact I was told another price by their employee, they wrote back that they’re sorry I wasn’t satisfied and how competitive the airline market is. Not a single word about my complaint.

My problem now is two-fold: since I don’t have any written proof, I can’t prove I was ripped off. Since Delta chooses to ignore my complaint, I would have to go to court, which would probably cost far more than the amount Delta owes me.

Full story here: http://delta-owes-me.blogspot.com/