It is still easy to be a “Delta Fan boy” if you will when it comes to their operations and Delta people. All the other airlines want to be Delta when it comes to performance, reliability, on-time and completed flights. When it comes to Delta people they are smiling, happy, and love to work for Delta and in turn love to make us happy as well. But when it comes to Delta IT – really not so much and it is making me crazy.
Notice the above. This past week Delta forced all of us Android folks who were using the perfect older versions of the Fly Delta App that did not contain the auto check-in “feature” to upgrade or not use the app. Thanks Delta! Oh and there is so much more.
The Delta.com home page went from sleek, functional and a pleasure to use to the above. I, and so many others, just hate it. It takes me so many more clicks to do what was quick and easy before. I know many flyers are simply using Expedia or Priceline to find flights now vs. putting up with the new cartoon home page and I get that.
Bit.ly/olddelta
Delta.com has never been the best at finding all the flights available but now I never simply type Delta.com but use the above bitly link when I do visit Delta. Sigh. But even then the hopelessly busted award page is enough to make you pull your hair out. Let me demonstrate.
Let’s say I want to do something really simple. Say I want to avoid a LONG CRJ200 ride (because they are the worst jets ever created) and thus only want to connect via Detroit out of South Bend, Indiana to Gothenburg, Sweden. Delta.dumb tells me “no results”. Really? But when you do just a one-way search you get:
Now avoiding the elephant in the room that on 3 days either way the award price for the flights is mind numbingly bat crazy expensive (and was as little as 50,000 points at a Level 1 award a few years back as well), it seems there are flights. Maybe just not connecting via DTW or Detroit. Let’s click and see:
Oh there they are – Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! And this is just one example of an ultra simple flight search. Don’t even think about doing difficult Skyteam partner searches – and sometimes if you do all you get is phantom award space. So you have to call a Delta rep. But know when you do this they may not even know who all of the Skyteam partners are and that you can fly them with SkyMiles. Let’s look at one more:
My Amex statement generates around the 1st of the month every month (#ProTip – you can call in and request this btw). As of the beginning of August I completed my $60,000 in spend to harvest the second bonus round of MQMs from my Delta Amex Reserve Business card. I knew they were ready for harvest because my 15,000 bonus SkyMiles had posted to my account. But when I go to Delta.com and my SkyMiles page notice that the spend “bar” is not correct. This has been an ongoing issue all year long for both those who have organic spend ONLY on their card as well as those who are more creative in their spending (no, Delta and Amex are not blocking MS – the IT is simply busted).
Bottom line is it really is getting to be too much and is making my “Delta Experience” one I almost do not look forward to anymore. Get me on the Delta jets and I know I will be happy but the process of getting to that point is making me crazy. Anyone else? – René
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Agree 100%.
I also get the dreaded “no results were found for your search” when I try to simply switch from a revenue ($) search (which by default is my favored ordering by departure times) to a SM reward ticket search in order of departure times (since SM reward tickets have a default ordering by price). So I have to write down all of my desired departure times and connections by hand and then go back and find them manually in the 50 alternative offerings provided by delta.com. Terrible.
I feel so naive – but thank you for letting me know that danged “yearly spend” tally was broken. I kept thinking – surely I am close to hitting 25K by now. I will phone AMEX to see if they can give me a total.
Your info is so helpful – thanks, Rene.
I thought the increased difficulty of booking a flight on the new delta.com was a “just me” thing. Apparently not. Anything new has a learning curve but the new version still seems harder to use than the previous one.
I have had problems also with the accuracy of how they track flights and give the MQD + MQM credit. For one flight I have recently MSP/PHX: it shows credit only for the outbound not the return. Thus I am missing half of the appropriate credit. I have contacted the Diamond Desk + Customer Relations. They insist that it shows the proper credit in their system. But that is not consistent with what my account says and they don’t/won’t/can’t send a screen shot to confirm that it is correctly credited. It’s crazy and don’t see a way to resolve this.
@Bernard – Reach out on twitter to @delta. They will fix it.
can you over-ride the auto checkin on android ?
René, I’m guessing the answer to ms Edwards question is NO, or you would have given us a way around the latest Delta IT boondoggle. I hate the automated check in and was using the older version of the app. Are we back to just using the browser with Delta?!