“Delta has contacted a collection agency to force me to repay”

I’m on Wong’s side here. Sure, he could have checked in earlier…but the allowance is UP TO 24 hours in advance, not AT LEAST. Based on above, the shift was around 12 hours (the itinerary had been shifted up by nearly half a day). Given that fact, and the fact that he wasn’t contacted, I’d fight Delta every step of the way. Would anyone consider letting their dentist charging them for a missed visit if their appointment was arbitrarily moved up by 12 hours with no notice?

@John F – Easiest way to avoid the precedent is to just deliver what was promised, i.e. a flight at the times specified when purchased. Is it really so hard for companies to just do what they agree to?

As a side note, you cannot “correct the error with a notation”; the point of the notation is to tell “your side of the story” when you can’t get the problem corrected. However, most banks and credit scoring agencies ignore the notations when calculating your credit score, making them quite a bit less useful.

SirWired

@Douglas Muth, you are completely wrong. If a customer wins a chargeback against a merchant, the merchant’s only recourse is to attempt to collect via other means, including via the courts, collection agencies, etc.

Just my two cents…I checked my Delta flight and found a schedule change. It actually didn’t allow me to make my connection since it changed to arriving two hours after my connection left. I had to call many times to get a new flight. I kept asking for supervisors, managers, whoever I could get. It wasn’t easy but I finally got the change. They have so many schedule changes going on, there is no way they would have the ability with their down-sized staffing to contact everyone and re-schedule so they just claim to have sent an email. Fortunately mine was found early enough to change. Lesson learned: keep checking your flights for changes, early and often.

When he paid for the fllight with his credit card, it stated, on the bottom, “I agree to pay this charge in accordance with my cardholder agreement.” That requires that you pay for services provided. Since DL had space later in the day, i.e., they sold you a ticket- they by definition had space available. They SHOULD have accommodated without ANY problem if they failed to contact you – or make an effort to contact you.

Was Wong an idiot for not checking his flights the day before – absolutely. The competent and the qualified rarely get caught up in these things.

Was Delta wrong for not accommodating him? Absolutely. However, Delta’s contract of carriage clearly said in words or effect that they have the absolute right to change and modify and has ZERO obligation to tell you.

Here is the actual language:

“Delta will use its best efforts to carry the passenger and baggage with reasonable dispatch. Times shown in timetables or elsewhere are not guaranteed and form no part of this contract. Delta may without notice substitute alternate carriers or aircraft, and may alter or omit stopping places shown on the ticket in case of necessity. Schedules are subject to change without notice. Delta is not responsible or liable for making connections, or for failing to operate any flight according to schedule, or for changing the schedule or any flight.”

Now – that all being said – the contract is subject to some pretty significant legal rights. Personally, the event in question happened in California. I happen to be admitted to practice law in Caleeforneeah and can pretty much guarantee that this is a unfair business practice and it would be fairly simple to prove that Delta breached several implied covenants.

Strictly as a practical solution -

Send a LETTER to the collection company. a) You owe Delta nothing b) have Delta provide proof that you owe the money – send the final resolution from the credit card company where the credit card company told you – no liability. c) Tell them you have no intention of paying, and that from this point forward they must sue you to collect. You have no intention of paying. d) instruct the bill collector that you stand on all of your rights under the fair credit billing and collection act, and they must instruct their client of your contention you owe them nothing. e) Any credit reporting they do must contact a full statement of your dispute concerning you have no obligation to pay.

Then, go spend $50 and sue Delta in small claims court for breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing, breach of contract [i.e., the original ticket] seeking the full amount of the new ticket [which was separate transaction] as the damages – along with TRIPLE damages for violation of the unfair business practices statute.

Someone from Delta will eventually call you. Then sense will reign. You need a RELEASE from Delta of all liability for the second ticket. Thats the only way to make sure that the bill collector does not sell the debt to someone else for two cents on the dollar.

Its too bad it comes to this – but – next time – check in ONLINE and VERIFY the schedules you fool.

Wong is not required to check in 24 hours before a flight….the airline has the obligation to notify its passengers of changes and failed to do so. Wong did the right thing by contactiing his card company for a dispute. He owes them nothing.

@Joe F

I have a slightly different take on the contract of carriage. Delta is disclaiming consequential damages, which is reasonable. So if the flight is late and you miss an important business meeting, you can’t sue Delta. However, Delta, like other airlines have federal obligations should they change a flight. For example, if you miss a connecting flight on another ticket because of Delta you are SOL. But if its one ticket then Delta has to accomodate you.

I concur with the legal procedures.

@others

I know Chris has advocated checking with the travel provider beforehand. But I maintain that is an unfair burden for ordinary travel. Anyone who is a frequent traveler has far too many travel obligations to routinely confirm that the provider is one top of things. Now if the travel is extraordinary then by all means check. International travel, cruises, peak travel times, are all special circumstances where it makes sense to double and triple check your schedule

@Scott – funny, Delta NEVER used the defense with the credit card company that ‘they notified him.’ Which means clearly they didn’t – even the most perfunctory efforts will be the subject of an intense campaign by the airline that they ‘notified’ him, even if the notification is a notice on a departure board of a changed time. Maybe Mr. Wong is keeping that fact from us to make his story sound better – but – and I’m sure Carver will agree – the most effective means of obtaining truth is cross-examination.

As far as I know, the Contract of Carriage stipulates that you can get a refund of your ticket if the schedule change is by Delta. A 12 hour advance on the departing flight is not maintenance, force majeure, or any of the other nonsense that the airlines like to use in order to opt out of their obligations. Unfortunately, that means that you have to pay through the nose for a higher cost ticket, but your options could involve purchasing a WN ticket and getting to Boston via MHT.

Orbitz, UA, and most airlines have an automated service which sends text messages to your phone updating you on schedule changes, cancellations, etc but you have to sign up for it. I’ve never been affected by a major schedule change that I wasn’t notified by the airline and/or Orbitz (when I use them) – but I also double check my reservation 24 hours in advance via the email notice from the airline. My personal reason is that I tend to forget when my flight leaves and I’ve missed way too many flights because I *assumed* I knew when it was supposed to leave and was wrong.

Chris hasn’t stated whether a collection agency HAS contacted Mr. Wong, or whether Delta THREATENED to send him to collection. There is a difference to the response needed. Also, which charge did Mr. Wong dispute – the first charge, the second charge (since he needed to buy a new ticket at SMF) or both? I personally would have only disputed the second charge and let the first one go, because Delta did fulfill their obligation (transport Mr. Wong from SMF to BOS).

@Joe, not true about the competent and the qualified, because people make mistakes. Agree with you on the rest, though.

Do airlines still have a rule requiring the passenger to reconfirm flights X hours in advance? If not, or if the flight is moved up after the passenger reconfirms, the airline is obligated to use reasonable efforts to provide transportation when the passenger shows up at the last time he was notified of even if the plane has departed.

Now if the flight was moved back, then the passenger wll be notified when he gets to the airport.

Aside from the need to reconfirm, it is not the passenger’s obligation to keep checking even though it is desirable to keep checking for such purposes as reslecting seats..

A few thoughts:

“Shifted up nearly half a day” could mean 12 hours, or it could mean, say, flight moved from 5:00 pm to 1:00 pm, or 1:00 pm to 9:00 am – half of an “eight hour” day. I can envision some people who live fairly near an airport not checking on a flight’s status until three or four hours before departure, on the assumption that the only thing to worry about is whether the flight has been delayed further upstream. Obviously, there’s more to worry about.

And yes, anyone who travels regularly has learned the benefit of checking in 24 hours in advance, printing boarding passes at home, all that good stuff. I find it hard to believe sometimes that everyone doesn’t do these things, but I know some don’t.

I do think Joe’s got the right idea. Unfortunately, one hand often doesn’t know what the other is doing at a company as big as Delta, and the collections process may be something automatically kicked in because of the chargeback. Until it gets to the level of someone at Delta who realizes they’re (a) likely to lose the case and (b) probably will never collect on the ticket, the threats will continue. A lawsuit tends to get attention because it ends up in the legal department, and they’re presumably able to yank the idiots from collections, scheduling, notification, or wherever in to find out what’s going on to answer the suit. That may be enough for the lawyer to say “Cut a deal with him, NOW”.

I really would like to see some of these posters degrees

Bachelor of Arts from the School Of Hard Knocks. This thing’s an art sometimes. :)

I’m siding with Delta AirLines. There is almost NO way Mr. Wong was not notified. Delta uses an automated system that contacts you by email or phone (or both) if a flight on your itinerary is moved by just a couple of minutes – not sure how many exactly but I believe it is less than 15 minutes and may be as little as 2 minutes.

Also, the “Mr. Wong should have checked in 24 hours prior” argument is a bad one. Mr. Wong should have been able to check-in within 60 minutes of his flight without any trouble. Also, the fact that Mr. Wong was the only one (on his flight) arguing with the CSRs at the airport near the original time of departure means that “everyone” else was notified.

…And, since we are talking about California here, if this did happen and Mr. Wong wasn’t the only one affected, there would probably be a massive lawsuit against Delta for it – Californians love lawyers! :-)

We will probably never fly Delta again.
In January, we had reservations on Delta, purchased through Royal Caribbean, to fly home from Miami to Albuquerque. The cruise shuttle delivered us to the airport about 9 am for an early afternoon flight. Delta checked us in, took our luggage, issued us boarding passes, and gave us a gate number. In other words, they knew we were at the airport. They also had my cell phone number.

About that time, they sent us an E-mail message informing us that our flight had been cancelled and we had been re-booked on the flight schedule to leave at 8 am the next morning. Either they booked us in for a flight that had already been cancelled, or they sent us a message at home after we were in the system at the airport. Either way, an effective information system would have made a huge difference. There was NO announcement until 45 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave, when my husband and a few other would-be passengers started asking questions about the lack of posting at the gate. They finally asked everyone booked on our flight to report to the gate. The gate agent did not seem to know that we had already been re-booked and spent several minutes trying to find us seats on another flight. Or course we did not know that we had already been re-booked until we got home the next day and read our E-mail.

We were then told to go back to the ticket desk to get our luggage and vouchers for a hotel. We would have been better off at that point just walking out to the front, getting a cab and paying for our own room and meals for the night.

Downstairs, we were directed to the end of the line of people who were checking in for flights. After 20 minutes we reached the ticket agent who gave us a voucher for the Marriott and six meal vouchers (which we tought was very generous until we realized that they were each for $7) and told us that it was “too late” to retrieve our luggage. Actually, our luggage was still there and didn’t leave the airport until we did the next morning. Later that evening, at the hotel, we met another couple from the same flight. They had given up on the shuttle and taken a taxi. They also had their luggage. Seems that when the ticket agent told them that it was too late to get their luggage, this retired colonel just stood his ground and suddenly their luggage was available afterall.

Outside, we stood, waiting 45 minutes for the Marriott shuttle that took us to a hotel/conference center in an industrial district adjacent to the airport. We didn’t know our way around Miami well enough to have any idea how to get anywhere from there. The hotel was under re-furbishment. So there we sat, with no luggage, no coffee shop, no snack bar, no gift shop; just an excellent (and expensive) restaurant and a front desk that that provided free toothbrushes and toothpaste and had for sale a few things like tylenol and deodorant.

Making the best of it, we stettled in for a nice (really nice) dinner. The waiter confirmed that we could use all six vouchers for the one meal. If we had stuck to ice water and appetizers (and stiffed the waiter) we probably could have brought our dinner bill in for under the total of $42 in vouchers Delta had given us for food. But we decided to take advantage of the what was a really good restaurant and both had salads and entrees. We even “splurged” on iced tea and gave the waiter his well-deserved 20% tip. The total bill was $98.86.

The next morning we were on the first shuttle to the airport in order to get some breakfast and catch our early flight. On the Atlanta to Albuquerque leg of the flight, we purchased sandwiches. We had to laugh, Delta’s meal vouchers allow $7 for a meal. Their in-flight, food-for-purchase turkey sandwich was $8.

In the end, we each lost a day of paid leave, missed meetings and appointments scheduled for our first day back our respective jobs, spent 36 hours in the same clothes, and lost all confidence in Delta’s ability or willingness to communicate efficiently or honestly with their customers. We complained to Royal Caribbean, who muttered something about scheduling flights as a convenience to their passengers and declined our request for a contacte number to call Delta. In all honesty, we could have taken the time to start up through the system at Delta, but we had already figured out that it they cared in the first place, they would have announced the cancelation of the flight and let us have our luggage back.
If I need to be able to check my E-mail at the airport in order to fly, I need to find another airline. Actually, we will be flying to and from Miami again in January 2010 — on American.