UPDATE: Tickets secured!
After a looooong struggle and dance with Delta’s systems, which included having Hanna’s account flagged for possible fraud because of all the miles gifts that were coming in, we’ve had a breakthrough. A member of this community reached out to someone Most Senior in Delta, and within a few minutes all the needed flights were secured.
What a gift. Sheesh.
Systems can’t care. People can. I spent uncounted hours at my desk and nearly four hours on the phone with people whose ability to care is limited by policies and processes. The architects of those policies and processes necessarily work in broad strokes that cover most typical cases. The need to defend against fraud is understandable, but those defenses prevented the people I spoke with from acting on their desire to care.
Things didn’t loosen up until we spoke with someone who had the power to act outside the system, outside the broad-stroke processes. Once we found that someone, she waved a wand and Poof! Confirmed flights.
(Huge thanks to Amanda, who had the idea and follow-through to make this happen. Huge thanks to Susanna at Delta, who has a magic wand and who wields it with love.)
Original post follows below.
14 August 2023
Hello,
This is a short-term request for a very specific kind of support. Here’s the situation in nice businesslike bullet points, just like the ones they use in presidential briefings….
• Hanna is in South Africa with family, friends, and all the creatures and memories of her home.
• She is experiencing sporadic and quite difficult back pains. These started two decades ago, continued off and on, worsened during the pandemic. As ALS weakens her core, the back issues are becoming more persistent.
• A dear friend worked conversational magic to score Hanna a lie-flat bed in the first-class cabin to South Africa. That’s the ONLY way to make a seventeen-hour flight possible for her.
• Now we are working on making the same arrangement for Hanna’s return flight, without spending the $8,000+ required for a first-class seat. We’ve had the brainstorm of using air miles. The price in miles? 495,000.
Well, we thought we’d try.
If you have accumulated air miles on Delta or one of its partner airlines, and would be willing to donate some of them toward this possibility for Hanna, please contact Marc Rettig before the morning of Thursday, August 17.
Thank you, fellow sailors on these seas.
Marc
Quick update
As of 5:30 Eastern on August 14, we have 126,000 miles. Woo!
Still a ways to go, but there’s reason to hope.
THANK YOU.
yes, thank you, thank you, thank you! x
yes, thank you, thank you, thank you! x
Could you use a Global Upgrade Certificate? It would require you to book the flight in another class, e.g., business class, and if there’s at least one Delta One upgrade available it puts you at the top of the list. If you don’t get the upgrade because someone has more Elite stats and gets it instead, the certificate isn’t used.
Hi John. Thank you! I’m on hold with Delta right now to learn more about our options. Should I read your comment to mean you have a Global Upgrade Certificate on offer?
Marc – I didn’t see this until today. Can I help still? I could offer 100k
Thank you Maggie! Some things I’ve learned through this process: Delta limits transfers to 30k miles to any one person, and they limit receiving transfers to 300k per year. Oh, and it costs money to transfer miles. A penny a mile, which adds up!
Those policies would have prevented us from achieving our goal of gathering miles for Hanna’s flight! But two lucky circumstances—miles she already had and a discount she received—got us to the place where 300k will do the job.
I appreciate your offer. As of this morning we have more than enough miles on offer. If just a couple more of the people who offered follow through and transfer their miles, we’ll be in business. (I sent a couple of gentle reminders .)
So stay tuned, I guess. If we need the help I’ll reach out to you. Thank you again.
Okay. Well just let me know. Glad it looks like it will work. Maybe email me if you need additional miles.
Folks, this just in. I’ll say more in an update, but for now the short version:
After a looooong struggle and dance with Delta’s systems, which included having Hanna’s account flagged for possible fraud because of all the miles gifts that were coming in, we’ve had a breakthrough. A member of this community reached out to someone Most Senior in Delta, and within a few minutes all the needed flights were secured.
What a gift. Sheesh.