It wasn't until a few days ago that we finally got an email advising that Delta has cancelled our Sept. 28 flight to Venice. We knew long ago that there was a problem with our flight itinerary. Many weeks ago, out of curiosity, I had gone into the Delta website and clicked on "My Trips" and put in our record locator, and when our itinerary came on the screen, it was red-flagged with a note showing there had been a cancellation of one of our flights. It was a four-leg open jaw flight itinerary. It didn't say which leg was cancelled. It did say that no rescheduling was possible. I was quickly able to determine (by doing a mock booking) that the problematic flight was the non-stop leg of ATL to VCE. It was no longer being offered. Oddly, there were other ways for Delta to get us from ATL to VCE on Sept. 28, with a stop at AMS or CDG, without adding too much time. However, Delta had not chosen to reschedule us for those less-desirable (but available) flights but was just saying it couldn't get us there. We knew that we weren't going to be traveling to Europe on ANY itinerary in Sept. I could have called and asked for a refund right then but decided to wait for the official cancellation email. I knew the airline is busy and was asking people to hold off in calling.
The official email came on July 14, notifying us of cancellation. I called on July 15, at 9:30 a.m. One ticket had been paid with a cc and the other had been paid with Skymiles, putting just taxes and fees on the cc. This had required two separate bookings. My assumption was that refund was going to take two calls. I started by calling the Skymiles number to get the miles redeposited and the taxes and fees refunded. The recording on the Skymiles line re-directed me to the Delta number that is designated for refunds (800-847-0578). In other words, I'd be able to request a refund for both bookings with one call.
The recorded message when you dial 800-847-0578 tries a couple times to get you to hang up and go to their website to request your refund online, but based on comments from some other forum posts, I wanted to do this with a live rep.
There was no ability to get a call back so I just put the phone on speaker and worked while waiting to be connected. It took only 8 minutes. I got an extremely nice Delta representative. The call lasted 16 minutes. She explained to me that she wanted to do it in a certain way so that my Skymiles would be immediately re-deposited into my account instead of my having to wait a few weeks to see them back on there. At the end of our conversation, she said two refunds had been processed. She warned that "all refunds could take up to 60 days and two cycles on your credit card."
By the very next day, July 16, I already saw both refunds posted to my credit card, i.e., the amount paid for one ticket, and the taxes and fees paid for the Skymiles ticket.
I still have questions about why we didn't get earlier notice, but in the end, this was all handled very well.