I'll grant you that it doesn't seem very "open" that your are screwed once you start.

Could probably battle them for the $75 if you called C/S and announced intentions. Might not be worth it in the long run.

And I will agree that they make it seem, during the sales call, that number transfer will not take that long (and 20 days would have been welcome to me). Fortunately for me, the number was not a primary. What their delay cost me was about 4 months of the savings on the line. Because of the 4 month delay, they credited me for one of the months of service.

So as bad as your experience with them has been, mine has been relatively different, having had issues resolved quickly and a credit for service granted because of the transfer delay.

I'm sure there's actually someone that likes to fly Delta too. That wouldn't be me :-)