Guessed At Customer Service Director's Email ... And Got A Direct Response

Any seasoned airline traveler has likely been the victim of a weather delay, and airlines are not required to compensate passengers for such delays because they can't control the weather.

But that didn't stop a Delta passenger ... call her Jane Smith ... from trying to get some compensation when her return trip from North Carolina to her home in the U.K. was delayed for two days.

The U.K. newspaper The Guardian reports that initially, Smith was told by Delta that she was pretty much on her own, and offered her no compensation for the $275 in expenses she incurred while stuck in North Carolina.

Frustrated, Smith tried to find someone higher up in the Delta customer service department after she finally got home. The Guardian reports that she found a name, but not an email address. She took a shot, and used the firstname.lastname@delta.com naming convention ... and got through to the director of customer service. She didn't ask for compensation because of the weather delay, but rather because the airline's airport employees had failed to fulfil their obligation to care for her as a passenger and a customer.

Smith said that the director called her back personally, and offered $521 in cash, about $1,100 in travel vouchers, 45,000 miles, and made her a Gold member. Generous compensation indeed.

Two week later, she got an email from the airline's complaint department saying it was not the airline's policy to compensate passengers due to weather issues and offered her a $50 voucher. She had sent exactly the same email to both addresses. It did not rescind the offer from the Customer Service VP.

The moral of the story seems to be that it can, at least sometimes, pay to persevere. And proves that you catch more flies with honey rather than vinegar.

(Image from file)

FMI: www.delta.com