wkharris, unless you are suggesting that the Fuhrmanns were given seats next to each other, and decided to make up a complaint for the fun of it, clearly they had a "legitimate" complaint. It may be that action had been taken to put them next to each other, but even if that was the case, it was not communicated. Either that or the Fuhrmanns are bonkers.

You're right, Troy. We all had a meeting behind your back and decided to ignore you so you are now invisible to everyone here! :D

Maybe Delta just got sick and tired of all of their phone calls and decided to appease them.

Yeah, well that would be the Delta way. You have to fight for basic service to get them to "appease" you.

To The Judge - and everyone here. Thank you for taking on my isssue (am logged in as my husband at present). I haven't posted anything since 17 Nov because I simply did not want to get any more anxious. I had resolved to take my chances on the day as advised by a number of you in your posts.

I still haven't had any confirmation about my seats - so some of you obviously know more than I do so I will be there as early as I possibly can to hopefully be able to sit with my daughter.

To all those that think I was ranting and raving at the customer service officers - I can assure you I was not. I simply explained my situation (several times) and when I asked if they could at least offer assurance that the "normal" practice was to seat parents next to their young children - I was shouted at "I AM JUST TRYING TO HELP YOU". I understand that they were which I told them, but I really did not raise my voice or anything - after all, shouting never gets us anywhere, as this example clearly shows (as indeed I do have extensive customer service experience, having managed such a function for a national company myself).

I simply object to being treated like a person demanding the unthinkable. I did try and resolve this issue with Expedia, but they really did not want to know and kept referring me back to Delta, who obviously have the "power" to assign the final seating arrangements for all passengers.

When I posted that I could assure you the trip would be not very nice for the other passengers if my daughter and I were not sitting together, I did not mean this as a threat (as I would never displace anyone on a long trip on purpose), however, I was stating the obvious as my daughter would have been upset, possibly crying (for a long time) which inconveniences other passengers. I thought that was obvious from comment, but clearly not.

The other legs of the journey, as indeed we are travelling on to Altanta, had been adjusted when I first made contact with Delta which was great, but the first trip from Sydney to LA was the one that caused this issue. And I do believe I had grounds for complaint as all I sought was reassurance which was not given. The only thing that I was told was "we cannot guarantee you anything".

So thank you everyone for your valuable input, I am amazed at how many people are willing to assist/comment/put matters into perspective.

And to Phxflyer - I made a few phone calls to Delta, but not enough for them to get sick of me to "appease" me, nice attitude. You are not the only one that has a "right" to opinion.

To wkharris - I would thank you not to badmouth me in public! At the time of the first post - I did have grounds for complaint as I had no reassurance from the people I had spoken to at Delta - I STILL DON'T. You might know something about my flights, but I have not idea what is going to happen tomorrow!

Anyway, will let you know what happens

Miriam Fuhrmann

So there we have it...

wkharris.. will you apologise for your insinuations?

For a minute there I thought I detected some possible improvement in Delta's attitude to their customers.. but turns out, Delta does what it does best.. treats the customer like crap.

as i said before jim, the passengers have seats next to each other, as of the date of the original post, the seats were together. I have not bad mouthed anyone. do they have a complaint about the way they were treated over the phone, yes. nobody should be yelled at when they call on the phone. I can apologize on behalf of the company for that.

however, as u may read in my previous post i said "the OP really did not have a legitimate complaint about their seating not being together." so the seats not being together is a non issue, and that is what I have stated.

OMG I think I just figured this out! I realize, wkharris, that you can only divulge so much, however did it have anything to do with how the seats are lettered on the 777LR? If you go to SeatGuru.com you'll see that Delta doesn't use the letter "I" as a seat designator in the eceonomy cabin. For most of the p[lane the layout is

A-B-C [aisle] D-E-F [aisle] G-H-K

and in the last two rows

A-C [aisle] D-E-F [aisle] G-J.

I'll bet they either had two seats on the right side of the plane (H-K) or two seats in the last two rows where the letters are non-sequential and thought they weren't together.

wkharris - just gimme a "wink" ;) if I'm close. Thanks.

you're right, that IS the configuration of the 77L. and I can see where the OP may have been confused IF they were given a seat in one of the last rows. or on the right side of the plane.

Two things, thanks for realizing that we are trying to avoid divulging any personal information about the passengers and second, I think you may be on to something with the seat lettering. While I do not know their specific seats, it seems like the most plausible scenario. Another thing, one reason wkharris is suggesting that the complaint may not have solid ground to stand on, is because there is a date/timestamped entry from BEFORE the complaint was written that has them sitting next to each other. That date has not been given out, again, to avoid saying too much. I look forward to hearing back from the OP about how the trip turned out.

Thanks for the confirmation. So now I'm wondering why they spoke to several agents and a supervisor or two who all didn't realize that they were indeed seated side-by-side and explained the non-sequential lettering of the seats. When someone calls Delta from Australia are they routed to the US or handled by one of the offshore call centers in South Africa or Jamaica?

I don't know where they would be routed to. unless they're talking to a "specialty" department they are probably going to the "general sales and service" que. the first stop for those calls usually goes to montego bay or cape town. unless they are just way too busy, then some of the overflow from those calls come to the specialty departments.

In a way, doesn't this reflect just how bad Delta's Customer Service is? Here we have a customer with a simple and legitimate request. They could have been reassured, first time, first call and that customer would have been happy.

Let me ask this question? Does whoever is in charge of Customer Service know what they are doing? Have they never heard of the maxim of take ownership of the problem, and solve it first time?

Really, I think this illustrates very well some of the problems of the airline industry. People passed from pillar to post, repeatedly told to speak to someone else, lied to and given mis-information. It makes travelling a total hassle and compounds the problems. Who exactly is in charge of this at Delta, and how the hell did they get into that position?

Exactly, Jim. Even though there wasn't an issue and Delta, nor Expedia, were ever "on the hook" for that, there was still a massive service failure because everyone they spoke to at Delta failed to simply pull up a seating diagram and realize that they were indeed seated together. Since the Fuhrmann's initial issue, which never really existed, is now solved they may never return to this forum but I hope they are still reading the thread. At some point please write a letter to Delta to complain about the disservice you received from every single phone agent you spoke with. Name names if you have them but hopefully you jotted down dates and times when you called. Most call centers, now that digital storage is measured in terabytes and relatively cheap, keep audio records of every single call. It wouldn't be too difficult to track down those who spoke with you and give additional training and/or disciplinary action if deemed appropriate.

Jimworcs wrote…

Who exactly is in charge of this at Delta, and how the hell did they get into that position?

In the context of Jim’s statement the background of Delta’s CEO, Richard H. Anderson, is interesting. Whether Mr. Anderson has a customer-oriented focus might be open to question. His experience suggests he is adept at defending the palace against the angry mob. At one point Anderson was an assistant district attorney in HarrisCounty (Houston), Texas. He went-on to become deputy counsel at Continental Airlines. And, for two years, he was an executive vice-president at a company which has become the poster child of what is wrong with health care in America—United Health Care. To his credit Anderson earns a “mere” 600K a year, with the rest of his compensation tied to Delta stock.

PHXFlyer wrote...

It wouldn't be too difficult to track down those who spoke with you and give additional training and/or disciplinary action if deemed appropriate.

Perhaps there MAY be some occasions when call center staff actually get disciplined. First, if some of Delta's call centers are in Jamaica and South Africa that suggests the staff at those locations work for a contractor, not for Delta. Thus you have the same problem one would encounter with a rude counter agent for, say, SkyWest Air---Delta has limited control, at best. As to the staff that are directly employed by Delta: Until such time as the employment picture improves discipline may be a realistic option. Once jobs become more available discipline will probably be used sparingly. After all, who wants McDonald's wages and benefits when there are better paying jobs elsewhere?

Wow we have reached an accord. All we need now is an apology from WK and all will be well with the world :rolleyes:

To all those concerned about my family's plight with Delta Airlines. At the end of the day, things turned out well, my wife & child were seated together on seats 56, second last row on the left side, window (good assumption PHXFlyer). This was only established some 12hrs ago when we went to check in online. I can only assume that this was done in the last couple of days and we are both VERY GRATEFUL. We were only told via this chat site the other day that the problem was ressolved but could not confirm this until we were able to checkin online.

I CAN CONFIRM that the original booked seats were completely different, window seats much further up. Then when my wife first spoke to Delta (Sydney office) around a week or so ago she was told that the seat confirmation was not passed on by Expedia so the seats were re-allocated. She was then given two seperate single seats somewhere in the mid section but 4 rows apart. After further negotiations, she was moved to be one row behind our daughter in the mid section.

To Delta Airlines staff, I take my hat off to whoever pushed the right buttons to resolve the anxiety that my wife was facing. You have somewhat restored my faith in your company.

To all sympathizers, I salute you for your understanding, compassion and commonsence.

To all , I say, "build a bridge & get over it" because a little customer service goes a long way in this day and age.

If American Airliners want foreigners money, customer service would have to come in to play because otherwise, why would people take on a further risk of airline attacks than any other foreign airline if they don't get any reassurance and service etc.

Anyway, the Delta flight is due to take off in 3 minutes so I trust that all is well -ends well !

Not sure Max, based on the information provided on this site, that the information you were being given was accurate. The problem seems to be have been that the lazy liars at Delta were simply not doing their research and were just feeding you bull. The actual seating arrangements, as reported by WK and Justme, were timestamped as being together, even before you were fed all that nonsense by the customer disservice agents.

Not sure if the last 4 lines of your post are intended to be ironic.. I am with you all the way on attacking the falling customer service standards of US based airlines. Frankly, if you could have booked Qantas or some other airline for any part of your journey, I would have done so. However, if by this

you are referring to risks of terrorism, I would say this is not a valid angle of attack. All airlines are potentially at risk for attack and indeed some of the failed attempts prior to 911 involved airlines of other nations. There are plenty of reasons to not choose US based airlines BUT I don't think safety is one of them.