The Golf Club Saga
Finally, they've arrived. It's somewhat shocking how utterly mismanaged Delta (and/or their delivery company) handled this. To wit:
For about 36 hours, Delta had absolutely NO idea where the clubs were.
After receiving them, instead of calling me to let me know they were on their way, they brought them to my house -- where, as it was a work day, no one was home.
After I called them (just on a hunch), they took them to my work place. Despite me giving them the company name and suite number, they couldn't find our offices and left. (In fairness, they called my cellphone, but as I was in a distribution warehouse in Reno, NV, I missed the call.)
After trying that once, they tried for a second delivery - at about 6:30 PM, despite my telling them THREE times that this was a place of business and no delivery should be attempted after 5:00 pm.
Their response to the above was, "If you don't mind, I'll put instructions to only deliver between 9AM and 5PM" -- which was what I'd begged them to do three times.
Despite THAT, the instructions stated to attempt delivery between 4PM and 4AM. (Huh?
Throughout the entire process, Delta couldn't seem to understand that I live in San Francisco, no hotel is involved at all, and that yes, the New York address they have on file for me is NINE YEARS OLD. At last call, it still hadn't been updated, and requesting this change from the baggage folks (as opposed to, presumably, the full time address updaters) was astonishingly daunting.
Now, I'm going to sound like a xenophobic lunatic here, but I can't help but wonder if the fact that not a single of the seven different people I talked to at Delta were from or in this country created some of the headache. I have zero problem with globalization, seriously. But not only did I have to attempt to clear several language barriers, but whenever I deviated from their expected questioning, it was game over. Because my home address said New York, it was simply impossible to get them to stop asking where my hotel was, if I was in San Francisco for business or pleasure, etc. Even immediately after I'd say something like, "I LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO," nothing took. I'm factoring in some measure to the fact that Customer Service Representatives are often poorly trained and given scripts to stick to, regardless of their language. And while it was fairly obvious that they were all overseas, I don't know if that was a real problem or not.
What I do know is that, from the seven lengthy phone calls I had with Delta, none which lasted less than 10 minutes, the three attempted deliveries of my clubs (the last finally successful) from a delivery service, and the almost certainty that it will be a looooong time before I ever fly Delta again, this little incident cost that airline a preposterous amount of money.