[Bobb]

Just a note to future "light" after the fact travelers.

My wife and I won a trip to Vegas for our 20th anniversary. We were quite excited!

We flew from Edmonton, AB, Canada, to Salt Lake city, transfered from Salt Lake City to Vegas. Unfortunately, our luggage did not take the same route

Now I know this happens, but...
our flight in Salt lake city was delayed 2.5 hrs 30 min at a time, so you sort of had to hang around. The worst part of the delay (and as not very frequent flyers we forgot that if a delay is going to get you to your hotel a little late, you might want to call and let them know so that the nice room you had for your anniversary isnt given away and you have to spend your 20th anniversary in small room with 2 queens)

I should also mention I have a small pet peve about a person or company that always blames some one else for a delay or problem. Every announcment was made with a ground crew problem, a fuel truck dirver went to the wrong plane, etc. Sorry but this doesnt fly with me. I paid Delta, I want Delta to take care of getting the plane in the air at the right time. In the last 3 months I have taken 5 trips for business (Westjet) and all of the flights left very close to the stated time. And when they didnt, they simply said "Sorry", cracked a joke that made me smile and we were on our way.

Little did we know that our bags did not have the same delay as us (lucky buggers). In fact I think they got to see parts of the country we did not!

So here we are standing aroud the Vegas airport with (I kid you not) like 10 other couples! thats right 10! My guess is that a whole cart ended up going to the wrong plane.

So now you go over to the Delta Spirit Office (with the 10 other people) and wait your turn to talk to the nice ladies. Buy a coffee if you have to do this because this is not a quick process. Between the delay and the standing in line to talk to the pleasent ladies, we were like 4 hrs late getting to the hotel. Not bad for 4 hrs of flying time. Althought it wasnt as bad as the people in front of us who arrived on or flight but from a different connection. They had only been delayed 12 hrs as their 6:00 AM flight was cancelled! So these poor folks got up at 3 AM, drove to the airport, their flight was cancelled and they were put on a later flight (although they did get a 7.00 coupon for breakfast, which at an airport covers coffee I think)

Anyhow our turn to talk to the delta spirit people. Seams they actually know where our bags are (wont tell us) seams they had to be originally taken off of our plane because it was overweight, and went somewhere by mistake, but that they will arrive at 1:00 AM and that they will be shipped to our hotel (the one where where unknowingly lost our room). We received MANY assurances that when we woke up in the morning our bags would be there. "Next in line please"

So off we go, do the hotel disappointment thing, oh, did I mention that if you read the delta web site, they were supposed to give you things like a toothbrush and tooth paste (a basic ammenities kit). But I guess you have to ask for that.

Wake up in the morning, go to the bell captian, and he says no bags have come. (mouth now tastes like an ash tray as we havent had a tooth brush for close to 20 hrs) Hmmm... better try delta's web site tracking, since we have a number, and can see the status of our bags. well unless you know the first to scrawwled O's are the letter O and not a zero there site cant find your tracking no.

I know I should phone! First time I tried, I sat on hold until 10 min or so, and decided that it wasnt worth the cell phone bill.

So we decide that the best thing is to see someone in person. Cab it back to the Vegas airport, arrive by 7:30 AM. Dumb move by us as delta doesnt open till 8:00. But at least we had company as there were 3 other couples that had decided to do the same thing.

Delta guy comes in and opens up. (my small bit of revenge is that my breath now makes him stand back 3 paces) Seams they did get 2 of those really big trollys of bags but the night shift wanted to go home early instead of putting all of the bags in cabs or what ever they do, to get them to the hotels. Or it was too much and they thought the day guys should do some work. Seams the day guy was used to this.

We get our bags and they present our receipt for cab fair (only the one way) to the Delta guy, and he looks at us like "whats that for?". I figgured they would at least pay for one way of our extra cab trip to get the bags they sent on a side trip, and then didnt deliver. Seams he cant do anything about that but we could write Delta.

On the ride home, we were talking to the cabie about our experience, didnt mention any names until he said "Delta?". He said skip the letter, they never pay anything anyhow, not sure if that's true or not.

We had a wonderful 4 days in Vegas and flew home on Air Canada without issue.

I would be hard pressed to fly Delta again. I am 45 years old, fly enough to make my passport look a little worn, and this was my first and last trip on Delta.