To be fair, every airline does this on a fairly regular basis to people. But I totally understand the sentiment. Happened to me on American years ago.
Looong story time. This was
particularly bad for us for a number of reasons.
It was the tail end of our trip home from Fiji which was a 10-11 hour flight by itself We waited for 4 or 5 hours for our layover there and went to the gate. We had to go outside and take a shuttle to the other side of the airport due to construction. It was late afternoon at this point. There were of course others gathered waiting. The plane showed up to the gate, but there was no gate agent helping people or getting the line ready. Flight attendants showing up and standing around. A few minutes before scheduled boarding time everyone sitting by the gate gets a text message that our flight has been cancelled and alternate flights will be automatically made for us or we can visit the help desk or see a gate agent.
Because there was no gate agent, we find another delta gate and they say they cant help us there, so we had to go to main help desk. So now we had to go back outside, get back on the shuttle, go back to the other side of the airport due to the construction, wait in the long line of angry customers, and talk to the help desk. The automatic reservation that they booked us home on was of course not direct like our original flight, was a connection and left around 1 or 2 AM from LA, then went through ATL at 10 AM and got us home around noon the following day. I paid extra and had a longer layover just so we could avoid an extra connection. Now we were going to be having a connection anyway, still had the longer layover, and I got to pay more for it! And we get to get home 14 or 15 hours after we were supposed to be home.
So finally I get to the help desk and they say they can rebook us on anything else that is available. Of course it being the evening now, there is nothing else leaving anytime soon and there was nothing else available other than a double connector that got us home 1 hour earlier. I ask why the flight was cancelled, and they say that they did not have staff for the plane. I told them I had booked this flight 6 months ago, they should have staffed it or known long before boarding time that they did not have the staff. She apologized and offered a $15 meal credit that literally wouldn't buy the cheapest meal in that place. I ask about a refund on our tickets, no go. I say that we paid extra for the direct flight and now we don't have it. Nope. I ask about being delayed overnight. Since our next flight leaves so early in the morning and was now less than 8 or 12 hours out they can't get us a room anywhere or credit for that either. I'm pissed at this point so she gives me a second $15 meal credit (wow so generous, especially since there were 2 of us they cancelled on anyway why did we not get at least 2 to start with!)
So she says that she can't do anything about any refunds or credits, only the small meal credits and gives me the number to call in order to try and get compensation or literally anything to make it right. We stick with our automatically booked flights and get out of line to use our credits somewhere. I try to call the number she gave me... already closed for the day, call back tomorrow. Gee thanks. All while they have these #1 rated airline customer services posters hanging up....
We eat something, of course it's more than $30 for the two of us so we get to waste more money on crappy airport food. I get an email from delta that due to the cancelled flight they are putting 7500 points into my account. Whoopee. So we get on the 2 flights home. I call the number again, you have to submit a case online and once you have a case number they can talk to you about it. I submit a case online. I wait a
month and finally get a response. Because we accepted miles and alternative flights they can give us nothing. Thanks and bye.
They could just have done soooo many things better and they failed on just about every count
