So much to say about the previous posts on Brokeback, but it’s time to rant. Here’s the e-mail I sent to Delta today:

I was just on the Delta site to look into booking a flight. I logged in to check my SkyMiles balance just for reference, and saw that all my miles have been deleted. I immediately called your toll-free number and was informed by a woman on the phone that there is a three-year period wherein if there is no activity on my account, the account is deleted.

Obviously, the account is not deleted as I still have access to it. I can only assume she meant that after 3 years of inactivity, my miles expire.

I was never sent any mail regarding this action. I was not sent warning that I would lose my 23,400 miles.

After some questions to the woman on the phone, she transfered me to someone in the customer service department. I asked this woman the same questions, to which I got no satisfactory answer. “Perhaps this is not the program for you,” was what I was told.

In this day where airlines have cut back service to the barest minimum and where airline customer satisfaction, as a result, is plummeting, I can only wonder why your program would do something like this without some effort being made to keep my business. My reasons for not flying Delta in a while have to do with work–our company tends to send us on United thanks to corporate bargaining–and price. I have not found any Delta flights to be the cheapest in some time and so have taken other airlines.

Perhaps you feel my taking the cheapest flight I can find proves the point that you airlines need to cut back on services to make money and to remain competitive. IN fact, since all the airlines now pretty much have hit bottom, there is nothing else left to choose one airline over another. United may have the worst leg room on their flights, which would lead me to take American, but American charges outrageous prices for crappy food, even of cross-country flights. You all have made your deals with the devil, and so we shafted consumers have no perk to choose from except lowest price.

After building up my miles for a while, now to see you’ve sucked them all away from me, I have no choice but to get angry at you. I have no incentive to fly you now, knowing that if my travel does not take me on your airline for a randomly-chosen period of time (you can not argue that three years was a scientifically-chosen expiration period) that a nicety like miles will get taken away, just as other details of the flying experience have vanished with your sole concern for bottom dollar.

I won’t fly Delta now. I’ll go to another airline where I have miles and put up with their lack of service just because I am not as angry at them as I am of you now.

The customer comes last, despite the friendly face you put on, and so I can only do the one thing left to me: Not fly your airline again. Good luck with your bankruptcy.

I did not proofread it, which I’m sure is an issue, but they’ll respond with the same bullshit every other company does. Which makes the apology from American Airlines I got after the Thanksgiving problem even more special. (And even more special because I just used those apology miles to book a flight to Austin for my friend Min’s wedding!)

DAMMIT! Now my blockquote formatting is all messed up. WHEN will I have the time to fix all these tiny errors? 🙁

UPDATE: Ah ha! It’s the WordPress update. Blockquotes don’t work in any of the themes. SIGH!

AGAIN: So I’ll just gonna gotta add the

tags myself. Fanfriggintastic.

AGAIN WITH THE UPDATES: Read Delta’s heartfelt response here.