Delta recently made changes to some of its mid- and high-tier awards without giving its SkyMiles mem

Delta recently made changes to some of its mid- and high-tier awards without giving its SkyMiles members notice of the alterations. I ll highlight the specific changes to Delta awards below, but let me get something off my chest first /Rant on
For some reason, the Delta SkyMiles program rarely communicates important changes to their members and that really bothers me. From my perspective, loyalty should go both ways especially for a program that generates as much revenue as SkyMiles does. However, all too often SkyMiles changes happen plaza hotel and casino las vegas with no announcement and savvy members are left to pick up the pieces and figure out whats going on, while Delta remains silent.
We saw this with the drastic increase in price of gift cards in the Delta Medallion Mall,   pricing of  awards last year , the change in voucher usage policies and the list goes on. Heck, for a long time they never even provided award charts for members that lived outside of the US! I know many of the people on the communications plaza hotel and casino las vegas team at SkyMiles plaza hotel and casino las vegas and Delta and they are all consummate professionals, so my bet is that the silence on these changes is not incompetence, but more of a direct order from those in leadership positions.
I don t understand this strategy, since eventually people will find out about the changes and word will spread very quickly. People are skeptical of frequent flyer programs to begin with and when you get a reputation for not trusting your members plaza hotel and casino las vegas enough to disclose material changes to the program and how they can redeem their miles, you plant seeds of mistrust. You may get away with a couple of them, but as time goes on those seeds begin to grow and smart members begin to re-think their participation in your program.
I struggle with my Delta loyalty. On one hand, domestically I believe they are the best legacy airline with the best elite program. I feel at home on Delta planes and I love knowing that I ll mostly likely get upgraded and will have WiFi on almost every domestic flight. I ve been taken care of in bad situations and overall I like front-line plaza hotel and casino las vegas Delta employees.
On the other hand, the value of SkyMiles has deteriorated over the years and it is much more difficult to use SkyMiles at low levels than with almost any other airline. Some areas where Delta awards plaza hotel and casino las vegas are much worse than their partners like United and American: plaza hotel and casino las vegas SkyMiles one-way awards are not priced at half of a roundtrip, you can t book international first-class awards with SkyMiles and Delta levies special fees for originating awards in Europe. Seriously- you tout a global airline and loyalty program, but you ll punish those members who want to start an award trip in Europe?
No airline is perfect, but as I spend more time on other airlines and earn and redeem miles and points with other programs, I ve come to realize that my honeymoon with Delta is over. Even though the secret change that prompted this post isn t a huge deal in the scheme of things, it s  made me realize that the SkyMiles program is sorely behind its competitors in the most important category: trust. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. /Rant off.
Per this Flyertalk thread , Delta randomly increased the price of some mid- high-level awards between the US and Europe, the Caribbean, Mexico and South America that went into effect plaza hotel and casino las vegas September 1, 2012:
Are these major changes? No, but they do affect frequent plaza hotel and casino las vegas flyers overall points-earning and redemption strategy if you want that roundtrip Europe award, you ll have to find a way to bank another 5,000 miles total, and that s a consideration. I m not hanging up my Delta Medallion yet, but would it hurt the airline to have let its flyers know these changes were coming ahead of time?
Couldn t agree with you more! Transparency is one of the top ways to keep your customers loyal. Delta is putting its brand image in jeopardy by failing to communicate plaza hotel and casino las vegas changes to their consumers. I am also a loyal Delta flyer but these sneaky changes make me think about switching to another airline.
Yeah it sucks that the awards level changed but really, you would consider not making platinum because it costs an extra 5,000 miles? Hmmm, with all those miles being banked as a Platinum I d figure plaza hotel and casino las vegas it wouldn t make much of a difference. plaza hotel and casino las vegas Yes, the principle sucks but hey, airlines are businesses and they will take us for every cent (or mile) that they can take us for. That being said, if you have a choice and can easily plaza hotel and casino las vegas switch airlines- go for it! If you don t have a readily available substitute then just suck it up and figure out a way to get those 5,000 miles!
Delta has been hiding things from us forever! For example: If you search the same itinerary over and over again Deltas search engine will up the miles on you. I didn t believe it was true until I had my IT guy check the code and sure enough he found it! They are some sneaky bastards but it makes no sense why. I mean the better you treat your customers the more likely they will keep using your service and better yet tell other people about how great you are. Delta= plaza hotel and casino las vegas Greedy Idiots!!
Couldn t agree more Brian. With skypesos constantly falling in value, and an airline that is not straightforward with it s best customers, it s no reason why I will continue to avoid Delta. Southwest, although not perfect, has about the most simple and reasonable miles program, so I will continue to fly with them for this reason.
I give you credit for the restraint of your rant. After years of loyalty to Delta, I have seen the light (partly as a result plaza hotel and casino las vegas of your blog.) I always knew that Delta sky pesos were difficult to redeem. plaza hotel and casino las vegas I had no idea how horrible plaza hotel and casino las vegas they were in comparison to programs like United and American until I started accumulating miles with those programs via credit cards. My current attitude is Delta is dead to me. I closed my Delta Amex account, and I don t expect to be flying with them too often in the future. In short, the Delta loyalty program plaza hotel and casino las vegas does not inspire any loyalty in me.
I stopped flying Delta years ago because plaza hotel and casino las vegas I just couldn t get the low level rewards I wanted. Delta had no availability over the wide range of days I wanted for a family plaza hotel and casino las vegas vacation, while United had multiple flights on multiple days available right on their website no tricks or gimmicks required. I have never looked back.
In fact, I don t understand why more of the miles and points blogs aren t much more negative about the Delta program. It is by far the worst of the US programs, but a casual reader would not realize this. The in-flight experience is certainly a consideration, but these blogs are about acquiring and using points and miles, and the Delta program is by far worst, especially when it comes to using them. Besides, the in-flight experience at United (and I am sure AA and US Air) is pretty good too.
Delta keeps having the worst program and doing these sort of customer unfriendly practices because people keep flying their airplanes despite them. If the points and miles community consistently and unanimously railed against the Delta program at every opportunity, that would go a long way to getting the message out and possibly getting Delta to put a competitive, customer friendly program in place and prevent the other carriers from adopting the Delta model.
Delta is BY FAR THE WORST freq flier program of any major U.S. airline. Award travel is nonchangeable nonrefundable 72 hours before departure. With American and United you can change tickets or redeposit miles right up until departure! And yes like you stated no one way awards. No first class int l awards on partners. And it is an absolute bitch to try and get low level mileage redemptions. Even medium level mileage redeptions are getting harder and harder on delta. Like I said the WORST freq flier program of any major U.S. airline. They don t call them SKY PESOS for no reason!
For the past 10 years, I ve had the Medallion top-level status, first Platinum and now Diamond since that level was created. Unfortunately, I fly out of Cincinnati so I m somewhat of a captive customer even though DL has severely de-hubbed CVG from the peak glory days of 2005, they still operate the most non-stop flights from the airport. Even with the supposed increased availability at my status level (I accrue plaza hotel and casino las vegas 150K-200K MQMs annually), the availability of awards plaza hotel and casino las vegas at the low level is appalling when compared to competitors like UA or AA. You really have to be extremely flexible in your dates and choice of destinations. And some destinations like Hawaii are nearly impossible to find at the low level. Before the creation of the middle tier, the low availability wasn t great, but it wasn t terrible either. I would argue that it was better than the situation today. In my opinion, DL has pulled off award inflation by creating plaza hotel and casino las vegas the middle tier but is still able to dangle the low award possibility to the unknowing public in their marketing. I don t know if DL will ever change plaza hotel and casino las vegas their recent ways. I m like you in that I have a love/hate plaza hotel and casino las vegas relationship with them. DL does seem to have an ear to social media, so widely publicizing any negative impacts to the SkyMiles program may help our cause, especially if the topic gets picked up by national media i.e. USA Today.
I ve been trying to figure out a trip to Africa plaza hotel and casino las vegas like what TPG talked about for much of last year. I can t find *ANYTHING*. I also seem to be constantly encountering mileage costs as high as 325K miles for trips to Europe. That isn t even on the mileage chart! The flights that do have awards are often ridiculously long trips that fly to pointless places (found an LAX to NRT award that routed through Detroit last night while playing around).
But I really want to go to Tanzania next year and am trying plaza hotel and casino las vegas to learn patterns and about how to have the best chance of booking my trip. I ve got the 120K miles for a low business class award (luckily many of them are still Amex MR points). I ve tried the airfrance.us trick, but even on flights where they have awards, I can t find th