Q: I had an extended warranty with Delta Auto Protect. I canceled my warranty because the company didn’t hold up its end of the deal. I have an email stating I
would get my $1,673 back. I signed a release more than a month ago. Delta Auto said it had sent out a check 15 days ago, but I haven’t received it yet. Now the company won’t respond to or answer my emails. Can you help me?
Devon Welter, Connersville, Indiana
A: Delta Auto Protect should have refunded you quickly, as promised. When something goes wrong with a transaction and a company offers your money back, there’s an understanding that it will do so quickly. Why? Because things didn’t work out, and that’s the decent thing to do — a fast refund.
The foot-dragging seemed like a final insult from Delta.
This isn’t the first Delta case I’ve received recently. Earlier this year, I helped Tracy Bradley recover $1,018 for a claim on her 2010 GMC Acadia. She’d filed the claim six months ago and had been getting the runaround from Delta ever since. The company’s promised check was two months late by the time I got involved.
As I noted then, Delta doesn’t make it easy to appeal to an executive. Although there’s a help form to contact the company (https://deltaautoprotect.com/contact-us/) and an email address (info@deltaautoprotect.com), it doesn’t list its executives anywhere on the site. My research team’s efforts to find a higher-level contact were unsuccessful.
You didn’t indicate the type of warranty problem you had with Delta, and perhaps that’s best left to the imagination. But you forwarded a copy of your release, which clearly showed that “within 10-15 business days” you would get paid.
And that’s the problem — you didn’t.
When you didn’t receive a timely refund, you could have sent another message through the form or appealed to the “info” email address, but finding those executives is not easy. I’ll save you a little trouble; I’ve posted the names, numbers and email addresses of the Delta Auto Protect executives on my consumer-advocacy site. You’re welcome!
One other tip: I noticed that in your correspondence with Delta Auto, you became frustrated with the company. That’s understandable. But at a time like this, it’s important to remain calm and polite. Getting yourself worked up could endanger your chance of getting a timely refund, or any refund at all. Fortunately, this wasn’t one of those times.
I contacted the company on your behalf. A representative called you to apologize. Your check is in the mail — this time, for real.
Christopher Elliott’s latest book is “How To Be The World’s Smartest Traveler” (National Geographic). You can get real-time answers to any consumer question on his forum, elliott.org/forum, or by emailing him at chris@elliott.org.
