The AMEX Delta SkyMiles fiasco
It has been a frustrating couple of days. I thought I had a plan — a great plan — for saving money, but, alas, I apparently didn’t read the fine print. Pull up a comfy chair, refresh your beverage (a little Chick-Fil-A lingo for ya) and listen to my tale of woe.
We have a Delta SkyMiles American Express card. Platinum, with a generous credit line. Despite Dave Ramsey’s insistence that one can travel with only a debit card, I have found that to be less than 100% as easy as he makes it sound. That AMEX card gives Delta SkyMiles for every dollar spent. Sounds like a great way to rack up a free flight, until you try to use the miles, and discover that your 55,000+ miles won’t get you an economy fare seat to very many places you need to go. You also discover that the card miles are not really quite as valuable as you supposed; 55,000+ miles means nothing unless they are a certain kind of miles. It’s all about flight segments. So, if you are like me, and prefer non-stop, or single stop flights, it’s close to impossible to rack up enough segments to make the lowest level of Silver Medallion Skymiles status as a casual traveller. My daughter achieved silver in a single trip from Hawaii to Europe because of the segment hops accumulated.
A second “advantage” of that AMEX card is an annual Companion Pass, enabling you to book a flight and add a companion traveller for under $100. Some restrictions may apply. Apparently quite a few restrictions, neatly concealed in arcane airline codes not easily understood — I suspect intentionally so. If you go to DELTA.COM to access that companion certificate number and book a flight, it allows you to begin the process, enter all your dates and destinations, and see a lot of available flight options. The calendar that appears to select travel departure dates gives no indication of any blackout dates. When you get to the BOOK YOUR FLIGHT button, an error message comes up informing you that no flights are available that meet your criteria. That’s odd, because just moments before a list of flights were there to choose from, all showing lots of empty seats.
Upon calling the AMEX Delta SkyMiles toll free number, some very polite agents inform you that…
- (a) You can’t book companion ticket travel on DELTA.COM — only by phone. (you’d think the website might save you a lot of grief and wasted time with a one-line statement to that effect… but, I digress.)
- (b) Checking the requested flight numbers and travel dates, the agent informed me that no companion fares are available on any of those flights because “it is so close to the 4th of July weekend. When I told her, “I have read all the terms, conditions, and restrictions on Companion Fares, and I saw nothing about blacked out dates,” she said, “Well, companion travel certificates are restricted to L, U, T. X, & V codes.” I tried, I mean REALLY tried, to Google and educate myself on what on earth that meant, but I honestly still can’t tell you with any certainty.
All I can tell you for certain is that I have a Delta SkyMiles AMEX card that gives me points, but not the right kind of points to raise my Medallion status unless I book some crop-duster, convoluted, multi-city hopping, agony flights to gain segments, and not enough points to get a free round-trip to anywhere I want or need to go. I can also tell you for certain that a companion travel certificate with obscure limitations not easily discernible to the customer discourages usage. Do you think that might just be the main idea?
Beware. Read the fine print, if you can decipher it.