Delta Airlines treats consumers in an egregious, unfair manner; DO NOT FLY DELTA

On 3/08/08, after vacationing in Charleston, SC for several days, my husband & I were supposed to board a Delta flight from Charleston to Ft. Lauderdale, via Atlanta, to catch a cruise ship in Ft. Lauderdale. Atlanta's airport was having some cancelled flights & back-ups due to weather (snow flurries), so we TOLD the gentleman at the Delta check-in desk that we would opt to rent a car & drive from Charleston to Ft. Lauderdale instead of fly, as there was no guarantee that Delta could get us to our cruise ship in time. He did not inform us that this would have any impact on our return flights. However, when my husband & I returned to Ft. Lauderdale, FL from our Caribbean cruise expecting to fly home to Seattle on 3/16/08, we were informed that our reservations were cancelled because we failed to take the Charleston--Ft. Lauderdale flight on 3/08! Apparently, if you miss any flight in your itinerary they "assume" you don't want the rest of your flights in your itinerary & sell them to other fliers. Delta sold our tickets to someone else but refused to refund our money, meaning they made DOUBLE money on the same tickets. Delta also refused to pay for our new tickets home. We therefore had no choice but to PURCHASE new tickets ourselves. There was no flight that could get us to Seattle that same day, so we also had to put ourselves in a hotel at our OWN EXPENSE. Other expenses incurred included $30 each way in taxi fare from the airport to our motel & back, another (unexpected) day of boarding our dogs back home in Seattle, inability to return to work on Monday, & some $60 incurred in additional meal costs. Total additional costs incurred were around $800. Plus we lost a day of our lives we can never get back.

A final kick in the pants, the Ft. Lauderdale airport is such a train wreck on weekends that Delta does not allow anyone to check in until their flight is only 2 hours away. We arrived at the airport at 1:30 pm on 3/16 b/c our cruise was over & we had no where else to go. We proceeded to wait at the airport until 4 pm, at which point we could finally check in for our 6:00 pm flight, & THEN learned we had no flight reservation at all! So we'd wasted several miserable hours in the airport before learning we had no flight to even board because they'd sold off our tickets to someone else! I hate Delta Airlines & will never fly Delta again. If this treatment of consumers is legal, I am amazed. I have never been so thoroughly taken advantage of by ANY business EVER, & plan on complaining to every branch of the state & federal government that will listen.