Delta changed their award charts this past weekend. They didn’t warn anyone in advance and they still haven’t actually announced the change or notified their members in any way. That’s annoying and unfortunate, though the good news is that the low level awards didn’t change; only a few medium and high level awards did (details from Gary here). The bad news is that they had their rep come on to FlyerTalk and offer up one of the worst explanations I could possibly imagine:
Apparently Delta has decided that their award charts are now the same as revenue fares in terms of the rules about advertising them. At least that’s what they’re claiming the legal advice they received from their attorneys is. That’s simply idiotic. The DoT – the folks who make the rules about fare baiting, the rules Delta says they’re trying to avoid violating – has been reasonably clear that they don’t regulate frequent flyer programs. Certainly they don’t control things like the award charts. And many other carriers have announced changes to their chart in advance. That Delta continues to insist they cannot for legal reasons while other carriers do it regularly is pretty horrible.
Hopefully Delta owns up to their misleading policies and changes them. It would be a shame if they continue to lie to their customers like this.
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Delta might be the most dishonest large corporation in this country, to try and make your customers believe advance notification for award changes is a non-existant legal issue is a travesty…just like their availability
Well if they had the 4mile fare I think they’d now be stuck w/ it 🙂
“It would be a shame if they continue to lie to their customers like this.”
A shame, yes, but expected.