Today, I attempted to use my Delta Amex to purchase plane tickets at Delta.com. It led me through a series of failed webpages with poor to no helpful error messages to phone calls with Amex and Delta, and again, and again. Resulting in a successful $1,000+ charge on my Delta Amex for Delta, no ticket, and ridiculous finger pointing between the two companies.
The biggest thing that both companies failed to do with me, their customer, on the phone was to actually, “look into the problem,” determine a list of possible actions, and to determine the best one or two.
Like many folks looking to travel, I went to a couple of websites to determine which option to take. Finally narrowing all of that down, I set up my purchase into a cart, and then log in to my account. I then select my seats and the amount of miles to redeem. Of course I want to use my Delta Amex to purchase my Delta airline tickets, I am supposed to earn 2x miles for the purchase alone. I review my web cart and then click to purchase. I get a notification from my Delta Amex for a large purchase, but the website tells me that, “authorization failed” message:
I log in to my Amex account and call them. They politely tell me that my charge has been approved. I describe to them that the webpage does not indicate that there has been any charge. Nothing has been purchased. Here was their instruction:
Call Delta, tell them to call American Express, 800-528-2121, and we will tell them the approval ID. But you cannot be on the line.
“But, I am on a webpage. How will they know how to connect what is on the webpage, with your approval number, and then make my transaction go through?”
This is all they have to do.
They transfer me to Delta and provide the following number, 800-323-2323, in case I get disconnected. And here’s what the first person at Delta tells me
We’ve been having problems with American Express cards on our website. You can use a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover. We don’t call American Express.
But, what about my 2x Delta miles? What about what they said?
Oh right. You won’t get that. You can try again tomorrow, but the price might change.
Then suddenly, my ticket order vanished from my webpage. A dialog box did pop up:
Your shopping session expired.
Literally, the item that I was just charged for by American Express and Delta, vanished.
Call American Express and just tell them there was no ticket.
I call Amex back. They tell me again, that I need to call Delta
And tell them to call American Express and provide their merchant ID so we can release the charge. You can use your card anywhere else but Delta right now.
But, I have a Delta American Express. That has a fee. That I cannot use at Delta?
That’s about right.
I go back to Delta, and I get Laura. Laura, who sounds like a call center expert:
No. This is how it works. A credit card is presented and then it is pre-auth’d. There is an authorization number, the credit card company creates that. If the charge was approved, there was a number, they give that to you. Then that is used for the tickets.
Look, I have no number. They won’t give me a number, they want you to call, 800-528-2121. I didn’t make up this number.
We don’t call anyone. That’s not how it works. A credit card is presented and then it is pre-auth’d. There is an authorization number, the credit card company creates that. If the charge was approved, there was a number, they give that to you. Then that is used for the tickets.
We went into this trite cycle, and good ole Laura hung up on me when I asked to be escalated to a supervisor.
I go back to Amex. They have approved the charge from Delta and I have no merchandise from Delta.
Basically, the website is broken. Transactions aren’t happening. And all they do is tell me to call the other company. I finally get directed to Amex Authorizations, who normally doesn’t handle end-users/customers. In the end, the only course of action is to sit it out for 5-7 days and let the transaction expire. If there is no transaction on Delta’s end, the transaction shouldn’t get processed.
How painful. If they truly have a business partnership, they’d be working together. If they truly cared about their customer, they would look into it on their side, rather than sending their customer on a rabbit chase.
I’ve made enough travel arrangements where I’ve made silver status on at least 3 airlines for years. Gold on one. This is the first time I’ve encountered anything like this.