{"id":396,"date":"2015-01-08T20:52:20","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T20:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/?p=396"},"modified":"2015-01-08T20:58:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T20:58:00","slug":"08-january-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/?p=396","title":{"rendered":"08 January 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I received what I think was a love letter from Delta Airlines<\/a>. In between the salutation and the\u00a0valediction was this (and only this):<\/p>\n

Your question require verbal communication, please contact our\u00a0International Reservations department of France at +33 (0)892 702 609.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It took Delta two days to write that one sentence, so I know they labored over it and that I should examine it carefully.\u00a0What they have\u00a0written has all the hallmarks of deep felt emotion: there’s the lack of subject-verb agreement, which can happen when your heart is all aflutter. Then there’s their desire to have\u00a0me connect with an agent\u00a0in France. Since I’m not currently in France, nor will I be flying to France on the flight in question, I can only imagine that Delta wants to woo me with the language of amour<\/em>. But the best part is that Delta wants to communicate something to me that can be said, but cannot be written. Since we will be communicating\u00a0\u00a0over the phone, I assume both parties will be using words (at least I plan to), so I am desperately anxious to learn what words can be spoken but cannot be written. This secret should come in handy if I’m ever threatened by a\u00a0stenographer. I’ll just say Delta’s magic words, and the\u00a0stenographer will become apoplectic.<\/p>\n

In case you’re curious, the entire problem should have been easy to fix. On 3 January, Delta emailed me saying that my flight in May<\/em> had been changed. They invited me to choose my seats, so I tried to do that. That’s when I discovered that I was no longer assigned to the “Economy Comfort” seat I had paid extra for in July. So I contacted Delta. Their response started off nicely enough:<\/p>\n

Thank you for your email to\u00a0Delta<\/span>\u00a0Air Lines regarding Economy Comfort\u00a0seat for your upcoming travel to Cincinnati. We apologize that due to\u00a0schedule change you did not get re-accommodated in your originally\u00a0purchased seat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point, I expected the next paragraph to say something like “I have corrected our mistake\u2026.” It would have been awesome if they recognized that I had to spend some of my time essentially supervising them. Instead, I got this:<\/p>\n

Please know that we will try our best to provide you with a similar seat\u00a0up to departure. However, if we cannot accommodate you in an Economy\u00a0Comfort seat at the time of departure, we will automatically refund any\u00a0money you paid for this product.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then the email ended. I wrote back asking for clarification. Does the phrase “up to departure” mean that they will assign me the kind of seat I paid for, but if I’m late, they’ll give it away? That would be understandable, but I’d need to be assigned to an Economy Comfort seat first before I could lose it. What I was concerned it really meant was: we’re going to try to find someone else who will pay more for that seat. If we can, we’ll give you your money back. If we can’t, you can have it. And that does not seem fair to me.<\/p>\n

I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, can anyone explain why they began their response by thanking me for writing to\u00a0Delta Air Lines? I mean, I know to whom I wrote, and even if I forgot, their email address (ContactUs.Delta@delta.com) serves as a helpful, if not redundant, reminder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I received what I think was a love letter from Delta Airlines. In between the salutation and the\u00a0valediction was this (and only this): Your question require verbal communication, please contact our\u00a0International Reservations department of France at +33 (0)892 702 609. It took Delta two days to write that one sentence, so I know they … Continue reading 08 January 2015<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398,"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briandomino.com\/mudec\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}