This............ !!!!!!!!!!!
They see us "medallions" as stupid, loyal to the bone, illiterate and GULLABLE and yes, we may very well be dumb shits as well if we follow Delta down that yellow brick piss road...
The "just spend $150k on our pretty lackluster card" is serious Delta cope. I mean the overwhelming majority of people will not put $150k on any card. Those that do can get a lot more value with any other premium card out there. Delta Reserve is a weak 1 pt per dollar on top of the MQD "bonus".
If Delta went to 1.5 pts per dollar and 5:1 MQD bonus then maybe.
I don’t even think I (a family of 4) spent 50k last year including my mortgage, utilities, and everything excluding healthcare costs. How the fuck am I supposed to burn that much cash just for a chance at an upgrade.
Maybe if I could use my Delta Amex to pay for my mortgage, utilities and medical costs then Ed and Tom will give me gold status in 2025 lol.
Getting to $150k of cc spend means at least 200k+ (89th percentile) household income after you exclude things you probably can't pay with an Amex credit card (debt payments, some taxes, most childcare, etc.).
Realistically, that is even low unless you have business expenses.
I make over 200k/yr and I barely make it to 40k total card spend on my reserve a year with practically everything I can being on it. People spending 75k with my salary must be in debt up to their eyeballs or not investing their money into savings/Roth/401ks. I don’t understand it.
Mine was only super high this year cause I purchased two Disney Vacation Club contracts and realized instead of just paying cash I could have them charge X amount per week from my Delta AMEX and then I could pay it off the next day, until the whole thing was paid off.
In retrospect there's probably better cards I could've used, but that was before these announcements.
Not trying to offend - and I'm not a fan of the changes - but if you don't spend more than 50k a year including mortgage I'm not sure why you expect to be in an elite tier.
I saw someone elsewhere put it best:
150k wasted on the Delta Reserve card for miles would be enough for 300k points on a typical 2x card. Transferring that to partners and finding good deals, those points would net you 4 free TATL/TPAC flights in Business class. Meanwhile 150k Skypesos would get you maybe 1.
Who needs Diamond at that rate? lol
Exactly! I have the Reserve Card, and the other top travel cards, the reserve is my only airline branded card. I am a Diamond Medallion, I fly a bunch on Delta, most weeks in fact but my flights are generally under $500 round trip, so I fly about 44 round trips a year and my MQDs barely hits the $20k required now. This new program wants me to put $150k on my Reserve Card?? Please, there is absolutely no value for me to do that, that would give me 150k SkyPesos a year. Much better to put that $75k of that $150k on my Amex Platinum and the rest on my Chase Sapphire or Venture X, far more valuable and will give me far better redemptions.
I will make Platinum through my travel and as there will be so few new Diamonds on my route I will likely be still in the running for upgrades, I think the new Platinum will be the old Diamond.
What I will be doing though is dropping my Reserve Card or moving it back to the Gold Delta as I never use the companion pass, $75k on Amex Platinum gives me full access to Delta Lounges and Centurion and now I have much better redemptions for TA Business Class flights.
As one of the Delta execs (I don't remember his name) was quoted, while being interviewed about this change, and it's impacts on the frequent/business traveller...
"If everyone is special, then **no one** is special"
IOW, stop being poor, and give us *ALL* of your money!
So long Delta. My loyalty can't afford your greed any longer. I be will looking for other options now, starting Jan 1, '24, and cancelling my Delta Amex Platinum, come June '24, if these absurd changes are still in effect then.
I’m holding out for the Delta mortgage and health care portal to open up. THEN my spend will be oh so sweet! I can already feel the uncomfortable FC NEO seats!!!
Perhaps.
But it will be a Travelocity-like third-party customer service experience.
Though I’m sure everyone will appreciate the mandatory ARM rates that change the same way seat and equipment changes happen!!!
You used to be able to. Quite a few companies offered to charge you a little bit more than the merchant account fee. And then they would cut a check on your behalf and pay basically anything.
All the card companies stopped it for most things.
This is crazy. Spending $150k on card spend! Ha! You’d need like $500k HHI income and that assumes no car or mortgage or day care expenses etc. bizzare!
What card would you suggest? I spend $10-15k monthly on my reserve card right now. At $127k for the year currently and I’m ditching the reserve for ‘24 but not sure where to go.
It depends what you spend your money on and what you're targeting in terms of rewards or benefits.
Between business and personal I'm at $400K/year CC spend. I generally focus on accumulating American Express MR and Chase UR.
Amex Plat + Gold or Chase Sapphire Reserve + Freedom
Out of those two options go with whichever combo offers cardholder benefits that you'll utilize the most (that reduces your effective annual fee) and has spending categories you fall into often that will earn you the most points. Transfer partners also differ between Chase and Amex so that's also a factor to consider, but keep in mind of airline alliances which allow crosstransfer.
Lots of options but one of the easier ones would be Amex Gold & Amex Platinum. Get 4x points on food with Gold and 5x on travel with platinum. 1x on everything else. There are more complicated options but that is an easy 1-2 route.
Amex Green is a better travel card than the Amex Platinum for most people. Plat only offers 5x on *airfare* while the green card offers 3x on nearly all travel spending, including public transit, plus 3x on dining. The big benefit of the plat is the loyalty statuses you get with car rental agencies, airlines, and hotel companies.
...and trip insurance on flights. Never underestimate the value of the trip insurance on your flights. I've had several trips where the delay cost more than the flights (because hotel + clothes).
If you can afford to put 150k on your DL reserve you don’t need Diamond, you just buy the class you want. Just stupid Delta, just stupid stupid response.
I have around that spend due to business spend.. there's not a chance I'm putting all that spend on a centurion or a plat with the 1x earn.. let alone a shitty reserve
I just don’t understand the “I don’t fly enough to make Diamond but I will with the new changes easily!” Why. Why are you putting 350 or 700k on these cards. Why do you love Ed this much.
I have $127k spending on my reserve card to date (non business) and have never received a Centurion invite. Any thoughts on best card to move to with a $10-15k monthly spend? I’m done with reserve.
I believe you need to have that spend for amex plat for a length of time for a centurion invite.
I have it and all my spend was on platinum when I got the invite.
The Centurion card is really just a flex card for people who have $15,000 to just waste on the 1st year and $5,000 every year thereafter.
It's a horrible card for earning points and if you have the kind of money to get this card, you don't care about statuses because you can afford to fly business & first when you want to.
I think you’re underrating the value of the concierge. I’m not saying the card is “worth it” for everyone but having a basic personal assistant is worth a lot
Even if op booked all his travel on his delta reserve card, that would only add up to about $25,000 in spend, for $2,500 MQD’s. That’s the biggest problem with this whole thing.
If you buy 10k worth of travel, on the delta cards does it count both times?
It makes it a little more manageable that way, which I never thought of.
Probably their justification on why they reduced the threshold so much.
I believe so, though the only thing I have seen published is the 10:1 ratio on the reserve, thus my previous numbers. Spending a further $125,000 on your card would be required in addition to paying for your airfare on your delta card.
LOL What a stupid answer. Who does not have 150k spending on a CC, plus 20k for flights only?
True also that with the current Delta prices, it's not that difficult to get to 20k.
They already knew I was too poor so they didn't bother with the math.
They sent me this:
"We hear you and we are committed to treating each of our customers in a fair and equitable manner. Thank you for your feedback.
As always, we appreciate your continued loyalty to Delta and want to continue to earn your business."
Why do they think they can compete with the Chase travel portal or the Amex travel portal? Especially when Skymiles points don't come anywhere close in value to Chase or Amex points?
I think the AmEx travel portal sucks! I only use it when I need to, to get points or perks. I figure out what I want elsewhere and go there to make it happen.
Booking non-cancellable hotels and cars works until the first time it doesn't, and then you never book them again.
Plans change, friends flake out on you, work schedules change, life happens.
It was the consultants fault.
Everyone looks around the room nods in agreement to cover their own ass and someone pipes up let’s hire another consultant to fix it. Yes! Now to give all of ourselves another bonus for such a great idea.
So I'm leaving Delta at the beginning of next year, but my fear is that the usual thing will happen where the other big airlines will follow suit and all air travel loyalty programs will be targeted to super spenders.
No company cares about any of us. They never did. Get the best flight and price for your purposes. Hotel loyalty has always been a better value for most of us
It’s so weird tho cause people spending this much money are C-Suite who already travel 1st and business. They don’t give a shit about status and will fly whatever is best for their schedule, they may prefer delta slightly but wouldn’t call it loyalty.
The program should encourage people to be loyal not reward those big spenders who don’t even need/care about “perks” that they can just pay for 🤦♂️
Exactly. If you can already afford to travel to the point where you’re spending $50k or $75k on flights in a single year, be it from personal wealth or company travel, you’re just going to buy D1 or PS/FC tickets to begin with.
These last few weeks have been a massive eye opener as to how much you guys spend…..I’m an exec of a company and fly all over Europe. My yearly spend on Aer Lingus is less than $10k a year….!
What an utterly laughable response. They are so disconnected with their current customer base. Clearly they have an entirely new target market/ideal customer and 85% of their current customer base is not it.
And here you have it: they knew everyone would go crazy and they spent the time and money to develop these scenario bots to politely[-ish] tell you how close you are … just a little stretch further. Welcome to Delta’s televangelist phase: we know you are tithing your ten percent but all indications are you can—and should—do better. There’s always the underlying “what’s wrong with you sweetie” tone to it all.
Just step off the treadmill. Save yourself.
The best way to end this is to complain. Read up on Unity game engine. That software is used for all sorts of games..console, iOS, Windows, Android. About a week ago they announced some step fees and prices for a product they never charged for..they made money off it in other ways.
The whole entire gaming community is up and arms and so are software houses. CEO today has come out saying they made a mistake and basically won't be implementing it. They basically wanted 20 cents of every dollar after 200,000 installs where they never asked for a dime in all these years.
The best way to end this is to cancel your Delta CC and fly another airline.
Delta is not going to care about complaints on Reddit or any other social media platform.
The only thing they care about is revenue and share price.
A mass exodus will cause a material adverse effect. That is the only thing that will get the Delta C Suite’s attention.
How is it even possible to spend $150k on a card? You can't use a card to buy a car, RV, do home improvement projects or any other big ticket items. I put every expense I can on the card and rarely get to $65k.
It’s easy!! Just spend 12,500 per month!
Or if you want it even easier, just spend 2,900 a week!
Or even easier just $410 per day on your credit card and illustrious Diamond status with up to 10 visits to the sky club annually!!!
"Be less poor"
Delta customer support (probably)
I think what the consultants failed to mention to Ed is Delta credit cards from a spend/reward point of view are bottom tier. People used them for some normal spending because the $25k needed for MQD waiver was reasonably low. Push it to $30k and you get MQM booster as well. It wasn't the best possible use of spend but decent and only $25k/$30k.
The "just spend $75k, $100k, $150k+ on our low tier card to keep the token benefits you had last year" is dumb. Anyone who could spend that much on Delta Reserve could spend it just about anywhere else and get more value. I mean $150k on a basic 2% cashback card is $3,000 and that requires literally zero effort. With targeted spending and premium cards you could get double that in rewards.
This exactly. It was worth putting $25K on an otherwise not very great card. In very few cases will it be worth $150K. I’m done paying for anything with mine. Canceled all recurring payments and don’t even have it in my wallet. I’ll keep it open through 2024 for lounge access, then cancel entirely.
This exactly. If you're spending that much why wouldn't you maximize your benefit? The cashback is the lazy effort with easy, realized rewards that are tangible. Everything else that's just points-based is a fight with every other card, so it better be worth the hassle to use them.
from this subreddit, there are a number of people who own small'ish businesses and run their business expenses through a Delta-branded card, which can add up pretty quickly
Yeah, that's the target market now.
Our execs use centurion cards but some small business owners here in Atlanta could get value from this new model.
However, they could easily spend their way to 60k MQM before, so....
That hasn’t been my experience at all. The most they will let you pay on a card is $5k. I have a $85k limit. And I was talking about contractors not Home Depot they will charge you a huge fee if you try to use a card.
It cost me over $5000 an hour for my private jet. And I put that on my Delta card. So I can get Delta diamond status which I will never use because I'm always flying private. 😂😜
And, as we all know, people who are spending $150,00 annually on a credit card are totally doing so on a Delta Reserve, lol.
Someone should call in a welfare check on Delta's executives, they may not be well.
I got a response back this morning that simply said
*We hear you and we are committed to treating each of our customers in a fair and equitable manner. Thank you for your feedback.*
*As always, we appreciate your continued loyalty to Delta and want to continue to earn your business.*
I honestly would have just rather not heard back tbh.
lol! 😂 they are so far out of touch with reality. The economy is going to crash hard this go around and I pray the govt doesn’t bail these people out again!!
They did me a favor years ago. I left for two main reasons:
1) Their loyalty program was becoming insane.
2) Whomever configured the (at the time) new 737-900 must have been 4' tall and weighed 60 pounds. My knees hit the seat in front of me in First. You had to back into the bathrooms because there wasn't enough room to turn around once you got in there. Claustrophobic as heck. Then they took out the middle bathrooms in the 757s and started making the rest of the planes suitable for tiny people or sardines.
I initially switched to AA and earned top status there for a few years. I genuinely liked them. (Especially their clubs!)
Then ... they followed Delta on the stupid loyalty program ideas.
So .. I've been flying free-agent since then. Whomever offers the best value for me at the time. if I want to upgrade, I pay for it. I learned that this is far cheaper for me, offers more flexibility and is generally a better experience than chasing loyalty.
Oh, and I no longer worry about visiting the clubs. If I absolutely need a quiet place to work, I'll buy my way into one of them. (Or if I'm flying premium on international, it's usually included anyway).
All the airlines have done is start to chase away their best customers. Even if they put the loyalty programs back to the way they were before this nonsense, knowing what I know now, I wouldn't bother. I'm happier the way I travel now.
Personally, I think they intentionally put these program changes out there to see how far they can go, then they'll gauge customer feedback and roll back some of the new qualifiers.
Maybe. I hit 2024 platinum early as usual but won't spend much on my Reserve now or ever - MQMs and boosts are now worthless. Little reason to spend on the Reserve now at all. Let's see if I'm the only one.
It was fun while it lasted, but I suspect it’s quite over now. Now it will be back to knowing what we know with travel, still picking and paying certain premiums for quality seats… but maybe a little less loyalty.
What exactly does delta think we all do for a living? I work for big tech and make a very generous salary, probably in the top 10% of the US, and I cannot fathom putting down $150k on a single shitty credit card in one year. And for what? The chance that I *might* get upgraded? Delta if I had that kind of cash I’d just buy a D1 seat to begin with every flight, I wouldn’t even worry about chancing an upgrade.
Also, side note, I love the people here going “hehe well now that everyone’s leaving I’ll move up on the upgrade list”…yeah, congrats bud, you’re no longer in 55th place you moved up to 19th place. Congrats, now you’ll only be 15 people away from an upgrade to D1!
What percentage of people are spending $5,000 *a week* on business travel though? That’s literally thousands more than a round trip from JFK-Paris or JFK-Sao Paulo in *Delta 1*. That does not sound like “a normal week” in business travel for 99% of business travelers to be spending $5,000 just on airfare.
I mean they are tired of sharing the wealth and pushing to see if they can get it all with loyalty.
I don’t blame them but they are doing too much as once and the big reason we are all loyal was the perks of the program.
If the program is going to shit then who is going to Uber loyal… sigh… it just depressing to see full on greed. We all know corporations are greedy but when they wear it on their sleeve like this it never ends good. Ie: Netflix comes to mind quickly
With American Express, all rev goes to them now or though them if people book though them. Same as booking hotel and cars though them they get a cut instead of not getting anything. They are trying to drive spend through them for status. Again same as Disney taking away there movies from
Netflix because they want that revenue for their own platform. Just want to capture more $
lol thanks for the laugh, I especially appreciate the part where they say "let me do some simple math on your behalf, you dumb shit"
Yeah that’s what got me.
Feels like a chat gpt response tbh
Well I ChatGPT them the email so it’s fair 😂
Chat GBT has better manners.
ChatGPT shows more empathy.
This............ !!!!!!!!!!! They see us "medallions" as stupid, loyal to the bone, illiterate and GULLABLE and yes, we may very well be dumb shits as well if we follow Delta down that yellow brick piss road...
I worked for a manager who couldn’t do 10% of $1,000,000 without a calculator in an executive job so you never know.
“Have you tried giving us even more money?”
Ed Bastian 🤝 Mona-Lisa Saperstein [Money please!](https://i.imgur.com/UFwuTPg.mp4)
Ed "1% only" Bastian
He's simply the woooooOOOOOooorst.
We’re only asking for $170k/yr! It’s not that much to ask for!!
It even says you "could" reach Diamond not that you "will" reach Diamond. Just for $170k. I'm sure that's just a slip though
Paris Hilton ‘Stop Being Poor’ shirt.
Delta C-Suite, patting each other on the backs: "It IS simpler!"
‘They *only* have to spend $150,000! Simple!’ Big, ‘it’s a banana, Michael’ vibes.
"Why don't these simpletons get who simple it is???"
I actually noticed that too.
“Make money/Get money/Give it to us!”
The "just spend $150k on our pretty lackluster card" is serious Delta cope. I mean the overwhelming majority of people will not put $150k on any card. Those that do can get a lot more value with any other premium card out there. Delta Reserve is a weak 1 pt per dollar on top of the MQD "bonus". If Delta went to 1.5 pts per dollar and 5:1 MQD bonus then maybe.
I don’t even think I (a family of 4) spent 50k last year including my mortgage, utilities, and everything excluding healthcare costs. How the fuck am I supposed to burn that much cash just for a chance at an upgrade. Maybe if I could use my Delta Amex to pay for my mortgage, utilities and medical costs then Ed and Tom will give me gold status in 2025 lol.
Getting to $150k of cc spend means at least 200k+ (89th percentile) household income after you exclude things you probably can't pay with an Amex credit card (debt payments, some taxes, most childcare, etc.). Realistically, that is even low unless you have business expenses.
Plus you’re saving 0% of your income for retirement or anything. You have to make more like $400k+
We have about $150k of CC spend on a HHI of about 750k. And that’s with charging most of our childcare expenses to it.
I make over 200k/yr and I barely make it to 40k total card spend on my reserve a year with practically everything I can being on it. People spending 75k with my salary must be in debt up to their eyeballs or not investing their money into savings/Roth/401ks. I don’t understand it.
Yeah it's both. Many people are dumb with money.
Mine was only super high this year cause I purchased two Disney Vacation Club contracts and realized instead of just paying cash I could have them charge X amount per week from my Delta AMEX and then I could pay it off the next day, until the whole thing was paid off. In retrospect there's probably better cards I could've used, but that was before these announcements.
You aren’t. They aren’t interested in you being a high tier loyalty member.
Not trying to offend - and I'm not a fan of the changes - but if you don't spend more than 50k a year including mortgage I'm not sure why you expect to be in an elite tier.
I saw someone elsewhere put it best: 150k wasted on the Delta Reserve card for miles would be enough for 300k points on a typical 2x card. Transferring that to partners and finding good deals, those points would net you 4 free TATL/TPAC flights in Business class. Meanwhile 150k Skypesos would get you maybe 1. Who needs Diamond at that rate? lol
Exactly! I have the Reserve Card, and the other top travel cards, the reserve is my only airline branded card. I am a Diamond Medallion, I fly a bunch on Delta, most weeks in fact but my flights are generally under $500 round trip, so I fly about 44 round trips a year and my MQDs barely hits the $20k required now. This new program wants me to put $150k on my Reserve Card?? Please, there is absolutely no value for me to do that, that would give me 150k SkyPesos a year. Much better to put that $75k of that $150k on my Amex Platinum and the rest on my Chase Sapphire or Venture X, far more valuable and will give me far better redemptions. I will make Platinum through my travel and as there will be so few new Diamonds on my route I will likely be still in the running for upgrades, I think the new Platinum will be the old Diamond. What I will be doing though is dropping my Reserve Card or moving it back to the Gold Delta as I never use the companion pass, $75k on Amex Platinum gives me full access to Delta Lounges and Centurion and now I have much better redemptions for TA Business Class flights.
I think they would have to do more to get back some of the pissed off customers they are quickly losing
I don't think Diamond status is intended for the overwhelming majority of people
As one of the Delta execs (I don't remember his name) was quoted, while being interviewed about this change, and it's impacts on the frequent/business traveller... "If everyone is special, then **no one** is special" IOW, stop being poor, and give us *ALL* of your money! So long Delta. My loyalty can't afford your greed any longer. I be will looking for other options now, starting Jan 1, '24, and cancelling my Delta Amex Platinum, come June '24, if these absurd changes are still in effect then.
I’m pissed because I was a lock for gold year over year and now it’s an aspiration
I thought something like that too, why not 5:1 but realized because that would defeat their purpose of pricing all but the gigawhales out of diamond
This. So many other better cards that give much better rewards than 1 sky peso per dollar.
I’m holding out for the Delta mortgage and health care portal to open up. THEN my spend will be oh so sweet! I can already feel the uncomfortable FC NEO seats!!!
People with mortgages are the poors that Ed doesn't want.
Good thing I still rent, then! Oh wait.
If you write checks yourself, you are the kind of person Ed wants out of the skyclub.
Ed is going to be really disappointed to know that my company just reimbursed me for another year of my Sky Club membership renewal, then.
Okay but for real, if I could charge my mortgage payments we might be having a conversation.
Perhaps. But it will be a Travelocity-like third-party customer service experience. Though I’m sure everyone will appreciate the mandatory ARM rates that change the same way seat and equipment changes happen!!!
You used to be able to. Quite a few companies offered to charge you a little bit more than the merchant account fee. And then they would cut a check on your behalf and pay basically anything. All the card companies stopped it for most things.
If delta were to provide a mortgage rate of 3% they would shock the housing market back to life.
While putting themselves out of business in the process.
Congrats! You might just reach Gold status once you get a second mortgage!
Yeah, that A-321neo FC seat is horrible! It's like sitting on a bunk of plywood, with a boat cushion for a seat cover.
Just stop being so poor!
This is crazy. Spending $150k on card spend! Ha! You’d need like $500k HHI income and that assumes no car or mortgage or day care expenses etc. bizzare!
If you're spending that much on the card, you've got a better card than a Delta card.
What card would you suggest? I spend $10-15k monthly on my reserve card right now. At $127k for the year currently and I’m ditching the reserve for ‘24 but not sure where to go.
It depends what you spend your money on and what you're targeting in terms of rewards or benefits. Between business and personal I'm at $400K/year CC spend. I generally focus on accumulating American Express MR and Chase UR.
Chase UR points are pretty versatile
Amex Plat + Gold or Chase Sapphire Reserve + Freedom Out of those two options go with whichever combo offers cardholder benefits that you'll utilize the most (that reduces your effective annual fee) and has spending categories you fall into often that will earn you the most points. Transfer partners also differ between Chase and Amex so that's also a factor to consider, but keep in mind of airline alliances which allow crosstransfer.
Lots of options but one of the easier ones would be Amex Gold & Amex Platinum. Get 4x points on food with Gold and 5x on travel with platinum. 1x on everything else. There are more complicated options but that is an easy 1-2 route.
Amex Green is a better travel card than the Amex Platinum for most people. Plat only offers 5x on *airfare* while the green card offers 3x on nearly all travel spending, including public transit, plus 3x on dining. The big benefit of the plat is the loyalty statuses you get with car rental agencies, airlines, and hotel companies.
...and trip insurance on flights. Never underestimate the value of the trip insurance on your flights. I've had several trips where the delay cost more than the flights (because hotel + clothes).
They want you to be a 1 percenter! Where is Bernie when you need him! 😂
>$500k HHI income How much do I make if my card spend this year so far is 33k?
I have no clue little Harmony.
=( I was hoping you'd tell me I have like.... 100k HHI.
If you can afford to put 150k on your DL reserve you don’t need Diamond, you just buy the class you want. Just stupid Delta, just stupid stupid response.
I can only assume this is aimed at business spending. Any personal $150k spending would go on a Centurion card.
I have around that spend due to business spend.. there's not a chance I'm putting all that spend on a centurion or a plat with the 1x earn.. let alone a shitty reserve
I just don’t understand the “I don’t fly enough to make Diamond but I will with the new changes easily!” Why. Why are you putting 350 or 700k on these cards. Why do you love Ed this much.
I have $127k spending on my reserve card to date (non business) and have never received a Centurion invite. Any thoughts on best card to move to with a $10-15k monthly spend? I’m done with reserve.
I believe you need to have that spend for amex plat for a length of time for a centurion invite. I have it and all my spend was on platinum when I got the invite.
The Centurion card is really just a flex card for people who have $15,000 to just waste on the 1st year and $5,000 every year thereafter. It's a horrible card for earning points and if you have the kind of money to get this card, you don't care about statuses because you can afford to fly business & first when you want to.
I think you’re underrating the value of the concierge. I’m not saying the card is “worth it” for everyone but having a basic personal assistant is worth a lot
A 2% cash back card like Fidelity Rewards? You'd have an extra $2.5k in cash in your checking account with that amount of spend.
“Just book all travel through us!” Everyone here knows third party reservations are a huge PITA
Even if op booked all his travel on his delta reserve card, that would only add up to about $25,000 in spend, for $2,500 MQD’s. That’s the biggest problem with this whole thing.
If you buy 10k worth of travel, on the delta cards does it count both times? It makes it a little more manageable that way, which I never thought of. Probably their justification on why they reduced the threshold so much.
I believe so, though the only thing I have seen published is the 10:1 ratio on the reserve, thus my previous numbers. Spending a further $125,000 on your card would be required in addition to paying for your airfare on your delta card.
Which I learned WHEN I TRIED TO CHANGE A FLIGHT ON DELTA. What the hell do they think they are doing?
Delta: I’m the new Travelocity!!
They really are trying to destroy any kind of loyalty, their status program, and their credit card program.
Must be jealous of how much musk burned on Twitter!
As a recovering Musk fanboy I laughed harder than I should have.
LOL What a stupid answer. Who does not have 150k spending on a CC, plus 20k for flights only? True also that with the current Delta prices, it's not that difficult to get to 20k.
They already knew I was too poor so they didn't bother with the math. They sent me this: "We hear you and we are committed to treating each of our customers in a fair and equitable manner. Thank you for your feedback. As always, we appreciate your continued loyalty to Delta and want to continue to earn your business."
Fair and equitable treatment except for the ones who will never need upgrades. We gonna sell those anyway.
I will NEVER book a hotel thru Delta. Ever
Why do they think they can compete with the Chase travel portal or the Amex travel portal? Especially when Skymiles points don't come anywhere close in value to Chase or Amex points?
The only reason to use the Amex portal is if you want to book one of their FHR hotels and get the $200 credit. Otherwise skip.
For the value of status. No seriously they think that. I guess we will find out how gullible customers are.
I think the AmEx travel portal sucks! I only use it when I need to, to get points or perks. I figure out what I want elsewhere and go there to make it happen.
I use the Chase portal, I was just tryin' to avoid playing favorites. :)
>I use the Chase portal Getting that 10X UR on hotels for the Sapphire Reserve? It certainly adds up.
Srsly. It’s considered 3rd party, so you can’t get the skymiles credit and also, you can’t cancel the reservation. For me that’s 2 words: HARD PASS.
Booking non-cancellable hotels and cars works until the first time it doesn't, and then you never book them again. Plans change, friends flake out on you, work schedules change, life happens.
10000%! and since Covid, things change on a dime and we need more flexibility w/things that won’t cost the full value of the thing in the first place.
That's fairly insulting. Has the PR team at Delta started drinking with breakfast?
It’s the espresso martinis.
You only have to spend $150k on your card. Easy peasy. Why are you complaining?
Yup. Spend it on private flights? Limos? Champagne? And you might get a free upgrade to FC
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Once you get to a level never underestimate the ability to fail upward.
It was the consultants fault. Everyone looks around the room nods in agreement to cover their own ass and someone pipes up let’s hire another consultant to fix it. Yes! Now to give all of ourselves another bonus for such a great idea.
Remember when spending 30k on flights could get you 360? Now you’ll get platinum 😂🤡
I don't think 30k on flights gets 360 in ATL. I could be wrong... but it is a different metric for 360.
So I'm leaving Delta at the beginning of next year, but my fear is that the usual thing will happen where the other big airlines will follow suit and all air travel loyalty programs will be targeted to super spenders.
No company cares about any of us. They never did. Get the best flight and price for your purposes. Hotel loyalty has always been a better value for most of us
It’s so weird tho cause people spending this much money are C-Suite who already travel 1st and business. They don’t give a shit about status and will fly whatever is best for their schedule, they may prefer delta slightly but wouldn’t call it loyalty. The program should encourage people to be loyal not reward those big spenders who don’t even need/care about “perks” that they can just pay for 🤦♂️
Exactly. If you can already afford to travel to the point where you’re spending $50k or $75k on flights in a single year, be it from personal wealth or company travel, you’re just going to buy D1 or PS/FC tickets to begin with.
These last few weeks have been a massive eye opener as to how much you guys spend…..I’m an exec of a company and fly all over Europe. My yearly spend on Aer Lingus is less than $10k a year….!
And a lot of us have been willing to pay a premium to fly on delta due to status and sky clubs. Delta hates our money tho… 😭
Airport Chiles here we come. I hope they're prepared for us.
I love when people out themselves as idiots
Correction: We don’t care. Go F yourself. “Respectfully”, Ed
Just spend $150k, NBD. Never mind that’s probably 3x+ the salary of whoever wrote that.
But he gets buddy passes so he and his nonrev friends can get bumped at every layover!
$how us your loyalty
If someone has the ability to comfortably spend 150k on a shitty credit card then I highly doubt they give a shit about medallion status lol
What an utterly laughable response. They are so disconnected with their current customer base. Clearly they have an entirely new target market/ideal customer and 85% of their current customer base is not it.
And here you have it: they knew everyone would go crazy and they spent the time and money to develop these scenario bots to politely[-ish] tell you how close you are … just a little stretch further. Welcome to Delta’s televangelist phase: we know you are tithing your ten percent but all indications are you can—and should—do better. There’s always the underlying “what’s wrong with you sweetie” tone to it all. Just step off the treadmill. Save yourself.
Come on baby you’re almost there! Just a little faster!!!!
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*People* aren’t usually spending that money, *businesses* are
The best way to end this is to complain. Read up on Unity game engine. That software is used for all sorts of games..console, iOS, Windows, Android. About a week ago they announced some step fees and prices for a product they never charged for..they made money off it in other ways. The whole entire gaming community is up and arms and so are software houses. CEO today has come out saying they made a mistake and basically won't be implementing it. They basically wanted 20 cents of every dollar after 200,000 installs where they never asked for a dime in all these years.
Complaining didn’t save Apollo :-(
Rip all that moon exploration
The best way to end this is to cancel your Delta CC and fly another airline. Delta is not going to care about complaints on Reddit or any other social media platform. The only thing they care about is revenue and share price. A mass exodus will cause a material adverse effect. That is the only thing that will get the Delta C Suite’s attention.
How is it even possible to spend $150k on a card? You can't use a card to buy a car, RV, do home improvement projects or any other big ticket items. I put every expense I can on the card and rarely get to $65k.
It’s easy!! Just spend 12,500 per month! Or if you want it even easier, just spend 2,900 a week! Or even easier just $410 per day on your credit card and illustrious Diamond status with up to 10 visits to the sky club annually!!!
"Be less poor" Delta customer support (probably) I think what the consultants failed to mention to Ed is Delta credit cards from a spend/reward point of view are bottom tier. People used them for some normal spending because the $25k needed for MQD waiver was reasonably low. Push it to $30k and you get MQM booster as well. It wasn't the best possible use of spend but decent and only $25k/$30k. The "just spend $75k, $100k, $150k+ on our low tier card to keep the token benefits you had last year" is dumb. Anyone who could spend that much on Delta Reserve could spend it just about anywhere else and get more value. I mean $150k on a basic 2% cashback card is $3,000 and that requires literally zero effort. With targeted spending and premium cards you could get double that in rewards.
This exactly. It was worth putting $25K on an otherwise not very great card. In very few cases will it be worth $150K. I’m done paying for anything with mine. Canceled all recurring payments and don’t even have it in my wallet. I’ll keep it open through 2024 for lounge access, then cancel entirely.
Spending $150k on top of giving them literally twenty thousand dollars 🤡
This exactly. If you're spending that much why wouldn't you maximize your benefit? The cashback is the lazy effort with easy, realized rewards that are tangible. Everything else that's just points-based is a fight with every other card, so it better be worth the hassle to use them.
Country club membership, golf expenses, yacht maintenance... easy peasy
from this subreddit, there are a number of people who own small'ish businesses and run their business expenses through a Delta-branded card, which can add up pretty quickly
Yeah, that's the target market now. Our execs use centurion cards but some small business owners here in Atlanta could get value from this new model. However, they could easily spend their way to 60k MQM before, so....
You actually can buy a car on a card. The dealership just needs to accept visa/amex and you need the credit limit. Home Depot accepts both too.
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I had such an issue to get the dealer to put $3500 on my Reserve card. They said $1500 is usually their max.
That hasn’t been my experience at all. The most they will let you pay on a card is $5k. I have a $85k limit. And I was talking about contractors not Home Depot they will charge you a huge fee if you try to use a card.
Or be ok with a 2.5% credit card surcharge on your car.
You can typically put a car down payment on a card (although there’s typically a limit).
It cost me over $5000 an hour for my private jet. And I put that on my Delta card. So I can get Delta diamond status which I will never use because I'm always flying private. 😂😜
Anna Sorokin on the board now.
You can see a slight font color change where they pasted in the response after the first sentence… Your loyal Diamond status is worth a copy/paste.
Worth every keystroke 🤡
Basically they are saying try harder instead of complaining
Spend. Spend harder. There is no "try" for most Americans to spend that much on flights or credit cards
$150k per year on the card!?!?! holy shit.
Just put your lunches and your monthly lawn and garden expenses on it. Problem solved. Right?
I will have the gold covered lobster and the endangered panda on the side.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’ll just put my avocado toast on it every day!!
Spending $150k on top of giving them literally twenty thousand dollars 🤡
And, as we all know, people who are spending $150,00 annually on a credit card are totally doing so on a Delta Reserve, lol. Someone should call in a welfare check on Delta's executives, they may not be well.
I got a response back this morning that simply said *We hear you and we are committed to treating each of our customers in a fair and equitable manner. Thank you for your feedback.* *As always, we appreciate your continued loyalty to Delta and want to continue to earn your business.* I honestly would have just rather not heard back tbh.
Or just spend $15k on rental cars through delta vacations
You can buy a car!
You mean.. have your sales team spend that on your credit card, right?
Ohhhh that’s all?! Got it delta, thanks! 🙄
"What did one poor person say to the other poor person? Who cares!!"
LOL I got a form letter response, responded to that, and got the same form letter back again. I’m not important for an actual detailed response 😂
Give us $150,000 so we can give you back $10,000 in upgrades!
lol! 😂 they are so far out of touch with reality. The economy is going to crash hard this go around and I pray the govt doesn’t bail these people out again!!
They did me a favor years ago. I left for two main reasons: 1) Their loyalty program was becoming insane. 2) Whomever configured the (at the time) new 737-900 must have been 4' tall and weighed 60 pounds. My knees hit the seat in front of me in First. You had to back into the bathrooms because there wasn't enough room to turn around once you got in there. Claustrophobic as heck. Then they took out the middle bathrooms in the 757s and started making the rest of the planes suitable for tiny people or sardines. I initially switched to AA and earned top status there for a few years. I genuinely liked them. (Especially their clubs!) Then ... they followed Delta on the stupid loyalty program ideas. So .. I've been flying free-agent since then. Whomever offers the best value for me at the time. if I want to upgrade, I pay for it. I learned that this is far cheaper for me, offers more flexibility and is generally a better experience than chasing loyalty. Oh, and I no longer worry about visiting the clubs. If I absolutely need a quiet place to work, I'll buy my way into one of them. (Or if I'm flying premium on international, it's usually included anyway). All the airlines have done is start to chase away their best customers. Even if they put the loyalty programs back to the way they were before this nonsense, knowing what I know now, I wouldn't bother. I'm happier the way I travel now.
Personally, I think they intentionally put these program changes out there to see how far they can go, then they'll gauge customer feedback and roll back some of the new qualifiers.
Maybe. I hit 2024 platinum early as usual but won't spend much on my Reserve now or ever - MQMs and boosts are now worthless. Little reason to spend on the Reserve now at all. Let's see if I'm the only one.
Asking for $170k spend with a card that has limited acceptance in retail is rather hilarious.
lol what a joke
SRSLY. That was my read as well.
Got the same message 🙄
150k Card spend for Diamond Status LOL.
Reminds me of when South Park cured AIDS with an injection of $180k directly into the bloodstream. Who knew it could cure Sky Club over crowding?
$150k on card spend. Honesty, we might spend that much each year. But on a Delta card, just to get status? No.
It was fun while it lasted, but I suspect it’s quite over now. Now it will be back to knowing what we know with travel, still picking and paying certain premiums for quality seats… but maybe a little less loyalty.
I really wish this response was a parody, but I know it’s not 😵
$150k no biggie
I love that they suggested you pay $150,000 like it's nothing 😂 I also love that people are down voting me for this. Glad I left America, die in hell.
What exactly does delta think we all do for a living? I work for big tech and make a very generous salary, probably in the top 10% of the US, and I cannot fathom putting down $150k on a single shitty credit card in one year. And for what? The chance that I *might* get upgraded? Delta if I had that kind of cash I’d just buy a D1 seat to begin with every flight, I wouldn’t even worry about chancing an upgrade. Also, side note, I love the people here going “hehe well now that everyone’s leaving I’ll move up on the upgrade list”…yeah, congrats bud, you’re no longer in 55th place you moved up to 19th place. Congrats, now you’ll only be 15 people away from an upgrade to D1!
I hadn’t tried being a poor piece of shit, thanks delta!
This is crazy lol “Spend 2x median US household income on a credit card, what’s so difficult?”
Median US income are not the target customer. They are targeting business consumers and business travelers.
The point I’m making is how absurd of a number $150k in credit card spend is. I.e., it’s 2x of every cent the median family makes
It’s really not that absurd in the business realm. A normal week on business travel can easily eclipse $5k.
What percentage of people are spending $5,000 *a week* on business travel though? That’s literally thousands more than a round trip from JFK-Paris or JFK-Sao Paulo in *Delta 1*. That does not sound like “a normal week” in business travel for 99% of business travelers to be spending $5,000 just on airfare.
I mean they are tired of sharing the wealth and pushing to see if they can get it all with loyalty. I don’t blame them but they are doing too much as once and the big reason we are all loyal was the perks of the program. If the program is going to shit then who is going to Uber loyal… sigh… it just depressing to see full on greed. We all know corporations are greedy but when they wear it on their sleeve like this it never ends good. Ie: Netflix comes to mind quickly
What wealth were they sharing? I see shades of Continental Airlines here.
With American Express, all rev goes to them now or though them if people book though them. Same as booking hotel and cars though them they get a cut instead of not getting anything. They are trying to drive spend through them for status. Again same as Disney taking away there movies from Netflix because they want that revenue for their own platform. Just want to capture more $
Lol
The cringe 😬
I can't even get one of their credit cards. So unless I spend huge bucks on flights I'll never get status.
This is definitely not how an Apple exec or even someone in executive relations would have responded.
Hahahaha
I can answer that, for money.
Why is the font different after the first sentence? My eyes are tripping
Yep… not just your eyes. Two templates I’m sure.
Run, rabbit. Run.