Our goal is to provide consistent and accurate information to our passengers at all times. I am truly sorry that in this instance you did not receive the information you expected and should have received regarding transit VISA information for your girlfriend - Delta quote
There is no clear admission of guilt here - PHX quote
For one thing, they are apologising. For another, they are saying that it is their goal to provide consistent and accurate information to our passengers at all time, and that in this instance I did not receive the info I expected and should have received re transit info for my gf. This is an extremely clear admission of guilt. They start by saying what is their goal and then continue by saying that this goal hasn't been met. They haven't done what they should have done. GUILTY!!!
I am pleased that you now see this as a "majority contributing factor". However, even though the airline that my girlfriend is going to fly with has now told her that she will need a passport and a return ticket (and bearing in mind that she has never flew before) you now expect her to turn into Magnum PI and do some detective work looking up words like "due diligence". She's not a lawyer you know. She took the airlines info and carried on with preparations for the rest of her trip. She shouldn't have to check the story of one of the biggest airlines to see if they had given her incorrect information. It's a bit like saying that I've called up the bank to see what interest rates they've got, now I'm going to do some detective work of my own by finding all these interest rates for myself (just incase they were lying to me).
I stand by my statement that it only took me 15 minutes using Google to find the wealth of information that I posted. Information that had you taken the same 15 minutes to research would have resulted in you avoiding the whole situation you're in now. PHX quote
Yes PHX, obviously if we had looked up this information, we wouldn't find ourselves in this mess that we are in now. This is obvious but as I've said time and again, why should my gf turn into a private investigator when the airline has already told her what she needs. This PI work was reserved for the UK embassy website. What you have to somehow try to do here is to try and put yourselves in the shoes of people who have never flown in their lives. They don't have a clue about flying. Having said that, even more experienced flyers wouldn't even know about this. I've recounted this story many times to loads of people from many countries, and not one knows about this special transit visa for your special country.
If you try and put yourself in the shoes of someone who has never flown before (which I know will be very difficult for you but please try). Now this person doesn't have a clue about anything so they ask the airline what they need to travel and they aren't told about a visa, only about the return ticket and passport. Now do you really think that this inexperienced person who has never flown before, is going to have any grounds for doubting the word of the airline company. Why should they think that they haven't been given correct information.
What I would like to see is for Delta to bring in a model answer for questions like "What do I need to travel?" and this is "We cannot give this information. Go to the Embassy website and find it yourself." This is perfect because the call centre worker, no matter how braindead, cannot get this wrong, and it also puts all the emphasis on the passenger to do the detective work themselves. As you say it is easy enough to find, but only if you have been told to find it. If my gf had only been told this then she would have found it also. But why would she know to find it if she hadn't been told to look for it. Your arguement says that she should have checked this info herself even though she had been given the information already. If you put yourself in her shoes would you still go on the internet to check if you need a transit visa when you have never even heard of a transit visa for the US. She would need to be a mindreader to think about checking for something that she has no knowledge about.
Why is it so hard for you to step up and admit that had you done this one simple thing differently things would be entirely different now? - PHX quote
PHX it is very simple for me to admit this. Obviously yes if we had done this one little thing then we would have found out about the transit visa. But I hope the "put yourself in her shoes" exercise which I described to you above goes so way into explaining why she didn't do this one little thing. If Delta had told her to find this info out for herself then yes she would have looked it up.
Hopefully you'll use this as a learning experience and also learn to accept some blame for situations in which you had at least some control over the outcome. - PHX quote
Damn right I'll see this as a learning experience. I'll never believe another word these lying bastards from the airlines ever tell me again! And from now on I will find out all of the relevant information for myself.
But with all due resepect, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and although you may think that I should accept some of the blame for situations in which I had at least some control over, I do not feel that if I had to go back a few months and repeat this whole process without knowing what I know now, I would have done anything differently. Yes, if I knew then what I know now, then I would have certainly done a huge amount of things differently. Hindsight is not something we have in the past though, is it?
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