A test for web customer service

Lately I have been inadvertently doing a survey of online service provider's customer service.

I have been trying to gain access to my frequent flier accounts just to see what was going on with them. We are finally in the traveling mode again after 5 years of mostly staying home, so I was wondering if I had any miles to play with. I even downloaded MilePort in order to track them more diligently (and signed the kids up for accounts too!).

The contenstants:
United Airlines
American Airlines
Frontier Airlines
Delta Airlines
Continental Airlines

The test:

It's been a while since you have accessed their website, and therefore you don't remember your
a) login name
b) password

to complicate things
c) you have moved physical addresses (perhaps multiple times)
d) you have abandoned your old email address due to masses of spam (and an inadequate spam filter)

The results:

All the sites are equipped to handle b. You have those security questions for that reason.

But without A (login), you don't get a chance to remember your elementary school's name (also a challenge for someone who went to 6 different ones, but I imagine in that I am an outlier).

Which leads you to the problem with your lack of D (email address on file which you have access to). They are happy to email you your login, but Mindspring is blithely bouncing all those emails!

So, I resorted to calling customer service.

Everyone was able to verify enough information with my address(es), old emails, new emails, etc. to give me the information and tools I needed to gain access with the exception of Delta airlines.

Delta apparently believes that their frequent flier miles are worth more than my bank believes my money is worth.

It took recitation of my prior physical addresses IN FULL to get her to admit that I had an account, which I then had to confirm my birthdate (which they had wrong) in order to get her to give me the number.

She then told me that she couldn't help me with the pin/password, but I could go online and have it emailed to me. I explained the email-address problem and she was completely unable to help. She couldn't update that information. She could mail me the pin, but it would go to the address in North Carolina, and no, she couldn't update the address.

She suggested that now that I had the number, I should try and guess the pin, but that it would lock my account after three tries, so stop after two and come back later and try again!

Her final suggestion was that I go in person to a Delta ticket office (of which there are none except at the airport) and show them my ID so they could update the information or send me a pin (she wasn't sure what would happen), and it would be super if I brought along something with my Chapel Hill address on it(!).

I was stunned by the labyrinth of security put around what turned out to be 500 measly points (yes, I was able to guess in three tries) until I thought back to when I was changing my name from Ward to Bates.

I remember irately yelling at someone on the phone about how stupid it was that I could change my name with a simple phone call at places like my bank, but they wanted to see me in person???

And then I remembered, that was Delta.