Our friends at View From The Wing reported on a good feeling story. The story is about a mother and daughter who were headed from Montana to Orlando to see their dying father (and grandfather). As anyone who has been to Kalispell knows, you cannot fly to many places from their regional airport. If you ever want to experience one of the most clear and gorgeous lakes, I would suggest that you plan a trip to Flathead Lake which is a short drive from Kalispell. I have been there a couple of times and I swear the lake is so clear and pure that you can see the bottom of the lake and the average depth of the lake is 160 feet.
Back to the story, in order for this family to fly to Orlando, they needed to transfer in Minneapolis. But on their way, the flight was diverted to Sioux Fall due to a weather condition. The crew then timed out and the flight was delayed for a full day. Based upon a conversation call with a Delta customer service people, the family decided to rent a car and drive to Minneapolis to pick up their connecting flight. As you can imagine, time is of the essence because they wanted to say goodbye to their dying father (grandfather) and losing a day could impact their ability.
The Delta customer service rep assured them that Delta would reimburse the family for the car rental cost. Since the flight was diverted related to a weather reason, Delta does not pick up costs like car rental. Subsequent to their visit, Delta later declined the family’s reimbursement request. They claimed that this Delta customer service representative was not authorized to provide this reimbursement.
Financially, this was a big expense for the family and they may not have incurred it if they had known. After a conversation with the folks at View From the Wing and learning about the circumstances involved, Delta agreed to pick up this expense. We have to say good for Delta to accept responsibility and take care of their customer.
At the end of the day, the family was able to make to Orlando see their father (and grandfather) and pay their respects before he passed on.
Even though Delta started off with their corporate bureaucratic response, they realized that the right thing to do was to take care of their customer even when they were not required to. The cynic in me thinks that the PR value in helping their customer overweighted the adherence to a strict corporate policy. But in the end, a big corporation took care of its customer even though they did not have to. So we have to tip our hat to Delta.