Delta Delta Delta, can we help ya?

In the grand scheme of things, my trip to Italy and back was pretty flawless.

With one small exception.

My hair straightener mysteriously disappeared from my luggage when I returned home. Disregard the fact that I never once used the hair straightener — I had brought it in case my advertising conference mandated that I make my hair presentable. It was too hot and humid to do anything but stick it all up in a ponytail.

Anyway …

This hair straightener is actually quite expensive, so I decided to file a claim — a process that I wasn’t looking forward to.  I imagined all the paperwork and receipts and descriptions I was going to have to write in order to simply get reimbursed.

To make the long story short, I received a letter confirming my claim submission, and have been waiting to hear anything further for about 8 weeks.

I’m a somewhat impatient person when it comes to processes/paperwork/waiting for my own money, but I felt like this was an abnormally long time to wait.

It didn’t help that calling the Delta Baggage Service did nothing — three times, I was able to get ahold of live people, but they could only assure me that yes, my claim was in their system, but they had no idea of its status or estimated time until completion.

That was the most frustrating part — there was no supervisor, no secret or direct number, no live chat online — nothing to do and no one to contact. My only choice was to wait, or to give up.

Or complain online.

Within seconds of my Twitter rant, I received a message from @DeltaAssist, asking me to send over my file number & information.  I immediately did, and received prompt and helpful responses, followed by an email confirmation alerting me that my reimbursement will be mailed to me in about 10 days.

This is incredibly satisfying and easy.  Why doesn’t Delta respond so quickly with all their claims? I feel like airlines get an especially bad reputation for losing baggage and slow responses — probably because thousands of people use their services everyday — mistakes are bound to happen.

With more and more interactions moving onto the internet these days (I had an online chat about my account with someone from Bank of America, rather than calling in and getting put on hold), I think it’s great that Delta is dealing with some of their disgruntled customers (including me) online.  Think about it — Someone who’s online, managing Twitter accounts or chatting with customers on instant messager can probably chat with 3 or 4 people at once.

Who knows if my claim would have been processed next week, or if I would still be waiting for years to come (I’m hoping the check shows up in the next few weeks). It’s unfortunate that people who don’t use the internet/social media don’t have access to these “shortcuts”, so maybe that’s our reward for jumping on social media bandwagons. Even with rumors that Twitter will dissolve soon and my decreasing activity on the site, I’m excited that larger companies are becoming more accessible through multiple online communication channels.

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