DELTA AIRLINES F!*@#ING SUCKS

So, they lost my luggage. Again, by the way. When I got to Budapest last month they lost my luggage. And yesterday I had the distinction and misfortune of being the ONLY person on my flight whose luggage did not land with the plane.

Sparing you too many of the details of my ordeal I will just leave you with some food for thought:

*Am I the only one who is totally freaked out that my bag was missing for 14 hours and nobody knew where it was? They couldn't find it in the network. Perhaps it was still in Budapest. Maybe Milan. At one point they were pretty sure it was in Boston! But nobody knew for sure. I have to be honest, that scares the shit out of me. Who else's bags are out there that they are not tracking? And what's in them? Well, even though I told this to the several people I talked to (most of whom were in Bombay, but I will get to that in a minute), they did not seem alarmed. But we should be. We should be very afraid at who is running the airlines.

*I am one of those people. You know, the kind that gets annoyed when talking to a customer service person whose accent is SO THICK it is impossible to understand them and then you realize (and then confirm when you ask) that they are in India and somehow this fact becomes the target of your anger and frustration. I don't want to be this person but I am. I understand outsourcing on an intellectual level. And to me it makes sense to outsource things like back-office operations and that sort of thing. But to outsource customer service is, to me, ridiculous and counter-productive. I have never spoken to a customer service representative in India who has actually helped me. I am always transfered (eventually and after much pleading) to a supervisor in the states. Because I decided that the people in these outsouced countries are not actually tasked with serving customers. They are meant to stonewall and talk circles until you are so confused and frustrated you just hang up. And, by the way, end up taking out all your anger and frustration on the fact that you had to deal with someone who is in India and not the US, someone who may speak technically good English but cannot be understood, someone whose name is fake (you just know there aren't a lot of Jimmys and Allisons running around Bombay), someone who misuses idioms to the point where everything out of their mouths sounds like a lame American cliche, when that's not even what you are really pissed off about. But it's easy to get confused like that. And in my opinion, this kind of outsourcing will, in the long run, really hurt businesses that use them. Because customers need to be helped. And these people don't help. And we get transfered to someone in the US anyway. And so that really seems like a waste.

*I called the 800 to find my bag. It's automated, of course (who talks to a human being these days, unless, of course, you press 0 and wait on hold for days and then get connected to a useless customer service rep in India - see above). So I enter my claim number and a voice comes on and says, "Your bag has been located." That's it. My bag has been located. And? Now what? Nope, no such information. Just that my bag has been located. Are they fucking kidding?

*At one point I ended up on the phone with Jim, a supervisor in Atlanta. We went around and around. He told me my bag was in the US but he didn't know where. NY, maybe Boston and probably Burlington, VT. My repeated attempts to get him to find my bag and actually get it to me in NY last night were continually rebuffed. So finally I said, "JIM! I have things in that bag that I need. For example, I need my birth control pills!" Vanessa, who was sitting nearby, laughed. Because she knew I did it on purpose just to make him uncomfortable. I admit it. But it was the only thing I could do to feel even the slightest bit better.

THE POINT IS DELTA AIRLINES SUCKS. Don't fly Delta. You have plenty of other airlines to choose from. Spread the word.