Lawyers automate this, so why don't airlines?
leejo.github.io
leejo.github.io
Looking at it from a practical standpoint, the company still incurred the same costs of the original flight just at a later time, and they had reserved seats for all the passengers, so it doesn't make sense for them to compensate as if the replacement flight had never taken place at all. [1] Had the author contacted them to let them know he wouldn't be showing up, they could've had a chance to agree and even to give his seat to someone else... but he just decided not to just not show up. At that point it doesn't make sense to get compensated as if the company had just let the seat disappear into thin air (no pun intended). [1]
[1] It seems people are misreading my comment to mean I think he shouldn't be compensated at all. I'm not saying he shouldn't be compensated. ("As if" is the key phrase here.) I'm saying any compensation he receives should be for the flight being delayed, not canceled—whatever amount might be appropriate for each.
I suspect all this happened in OPs case. If you make your own arrangements then this isn’t usually covered.
Regardless of dancing around the semantics of cancellation, a severe problem was discovered in an aircraft forcing it to reland and delaying all passengers involved. If such an event is sufficiently costly for the airline then safety and maintenance measures will have to be increased.
It’s also worth noting that delays currently result in large costs for airlines, and there is already an incredibly strong motive to stop delays and issues happening.
Not when it comes to airline operations. Crews are assigned to flight numbers; changing their assigned flight number, even to the same route/city-pair, constitutes a schedule change, which requires a recalculation of all their duty hours. When operations are all fubar and your crews are out of position you cannot afford to limit your options. Ergo, changing the flight numbers often has knock-on effects related to the crew regulations that are best avoided.
My answer still stands and may be considered authoritative (webarchive hint).
The cabin pressurization system failing at cruising altitude is one of the more common types of aircraft incidents. That's why planes are equipped with systems to handle it. While a catastrophic outcome is not impossible, it is exceedingly unlikely.
As to the compensation issue, airlines should be required to pay out the compensation automatically, with 3x the compensation automatically due as a penalty if the customer has to make them pay through the courts. This would remove the incentive to make it hard for customers to claim the compensation.
Given that I by now unfortunately have a decent understanding of the compensation rules, if I have a claim that I'm confident about and the airline doesn't pay immediately, I'll take it straight to court. If in a jurisdiction where they have to pay the lawyer fees, I'll have a regular lawyer handle it - no need to let an agency take 30% if you know you'll win and a lawyer can make some money (driving up the costs of misbehavior for the airline).
For consumer lawsuits you can often sue the airline at your local court, which isn't overloaded.
That means compensation shall not require the victim having to ask for it. It also means if the airline claims they can't track down the victim to make payment, they have to pay extra.
The author did no-show on the replacement flight provided by easyJet, and all of the griping will get them nowhere. You can’t take things into your own hands and then expect the company to refund you, the company would have provided the free alternative flight (earlier than the one the next day) and the EU fine had they just talked to a gate agent.
I’ve flown hundreds of thousands of miles and had my share of issues like this and you can always sort it out if you do it prior to taking the replacement flight.
When back in the UK submitted receipts and told they would only pay for our meal.
The alternative would have been waiting to see an easyJet representative, in an overcrowded gate, two days before Xmas. Those seats would have gone. I've been through Geneva airport enough times to know how it functions and that we were going to get bumped to the next day.
I write this in the gentlest manner possible, not directed solely at you: a lot of the "see a gate agent and they'll sort you" advice seems to be coming from a place of people who either don't travel very much at all, or who travel so much that an airline employee can practically feel their level of Airline Status(tm) from half a kilometer away and will race to their aid.
I fall in the third bucket, people who travel just enough to have seen a lot of things but not so much that any particular airline gives a rat's hindquarters about me. Gate agents largely do not have the authority--or the inclination--to help with much past their own flights. Anything you need done outside of that is usually handled at a customer service desk elsewhere in the airport, if such a desk is staffed by that airline. Most low-cost carrier (LCC) airlines do not staff help desks in the airport. And, in many circumstances, the gate agents wearing the uniform and logos of a LCC are contractors who hop from gate to gate, wrangling flights as they come and go.
An unexpected circumstance happening two days before Christmas in a busy airport on a LCC? I would do the exact same as the author of the linked article and get my traveling party where we needed to be with a minimum of fuss and handle the rest later.
If the airport is a hub for an airline, you might be able to get someone to make a change, but that late at night, even that is going to be difficult, unless it is a major hub for the airline. Like, if you get stranded in Atlanta on Delta, chances are someone is around who can help you, even late at night. Same for American in Dallas, KLM in Amsterdam, Air France at CDG, Quantas in Sydney, etc.
Delta has a concept known as Red Coats, which are employees empowered to make more decisions regarding booking, but most of the gate agents are beholden to whatever the system is telling them. I’m sure other airlines have similar representatives but Delta's program is fairly unique amongst American carriers, in terms of its visibility (a tip for anyone flying Delta who has a tricky situation, especially around rebookings, is to ask for a Red Coat. You won’t always get it, but those are the people most empowered to help).
Sometimes a non-status customer can get lucky by getting on the phone while in the airport — in my pre elite status life, I’ve successfully had gate agents speak directly to someone on my phone to resolve a situation — but if it’s right before Christmas and you’re at risk for not getting home and your alternate flight is leaving soonish, you’re almost always going to be better off just booking the alternate flight and then dealing with customer service later.
But as I said in another comment, outside of LCCs, there are two distinct classes of customers for airlines. And it isn’t just enough to have spent a lot on a specific ticket (unless you’re flying international first class on Singapore or Ethiad or something — but Asian and ME airlines are a whole different world), the airlines don’t care that you paid to upgrade yourself to domestic first class or even that you’re flying international business. The people they bend over backwards for either fly enough domestic miles that they spend as much time on a plane as the crew or are people who spend at least $30k with a specific airline. I spent over $50k with Delta in 2019 (and $20k before I was grounded in March) and I still didn’t qualify for Delta 360, their invite-only loyalty tier. Don’t get me wrong, Delta has treated me incredibly well — but I’m still just one of many thousands of Diamond Medallions to them. They won’t send me someone to escort me through security when I’m in danger of missing my domestic flight (something American did for a friend who has their Concierge Key status and pre-COVID averaged $50k a year with them for about a decade), but depending on the flight makeup (depends on how many other high status people are on a flight), I’m usually going to be in the group of people auto-rebooked to a good time or booked on a different airline without having to make a fuss, in order to maintain my itinerary.
Twice in the past few years I have flown, on my own nickle, what's called "Y class." This is full-fare, unrestricted, usually-last-minute coach/economy class. It gets you the exact same seat as someone who booked on Expedia six months prior but costs an eyewatering amount of money because you usually bought it at the last minute and are just grateful to be on the plane. Both times, something went wrong, once with an airplane having a minor equipment failure midflight and another where the required airplane never showed up. (It hadn't taken off from its origin and we were due to fly back from an airport that only got two flights per day via this airline.)
Both times the amount of money I spent mattered little. I was an economy-class passenger with no status on that airline. I wound up having to deal with getting myself where I needed to go via another airline and clawing back the money for both unused tickets.
Unless you have status, airlines are privatized versions of public transport, just with wings. In point of fact, I've been treated better by King County Metro in Seattle[0] than I have by virtually every airline I've flown when an issue has happened.
0 - I used to work the late evening shift at my job and would take the last Seattle-bound bus of the night to get home. Once, because a driver forgot that the route served a slightly different set of stops during that part of the day versus the rest of the day, the stop I was waiting at got skipped. After 30 minutes of waiting for a bus that OneBusAway claimed had long-since departed, I called Metro's customer service line to see if it really was coming. Someone answered, reached out to the driver, and figured out what happened. They sent a supervisor in a van to pick up me and the two other passengers who were waiting and took us all directly home.
I also totally agree with your bucket of passengers.
I used to be in the first camp, naively assuming a gate agent could help me. That quickly changed after I flew more than a handful of times. Then for many years, I was in the third camp (where you are), and I had to resign myself to being one of the people that has to turn to Twitter to get anything done (I sort of hate myself for it but for non LCCs, it works) in a real crisis. For the last two years or so (pre-COVID), I was in the second camp, and it was a true revelation to see how the other side lives, so to speak.
The reality is that there are two very distinct classes of airline passengers (foregoing LCC's for a moment because with few exceptions, none of them give a rats ass about loyalty. They are a volume business). As an example, within a relatively short period of time, I went from an airline giving my seat away even though I made my connecting flight (and had contacted the airline from the plane to warn about my delayed connection/assure them I wasn’t going to no show and to only put me on a later flight as a backup), forcing me to wait an additional 5 hours in the airport for a new flight (and I stress here that I made my connection and was denied boarding) without so much as an apology or a voucher for free food to that exact same airline, when a similar tight connection actually DID cause me to miss my flight, met me at the gate, took me in a chauffeured car to another gate, had someone expedite the transfer of my luggage, got me on a different flight to another US city (meaning I had to take one more flight, but at least I got home), actually held that flight until I boarded, and kept my seat class intact (I was flying business). I didn’t even have to reach out the second time (which was good because that flight didn’t have internet access), it was just taken care of. A colleague who had the same itinerary as me, and was booked in the same seat class, had to fly back the next day. The difference? My colleague (and me in the first instance), was just a regular passenger (albeit someone with a $4000 round-trip ticket in this case — still didn’t matter). Whereas by that second flight, I was on track to fly 150,000 miles that calendar year and had already spent over $30,000 with that airline.
I'll be honest when I say that I’m not looking forward to being treated like a regular airline passenger once I’m allowed to travel again. My status's are all intact but I don’t envision many 150k mile years made up largely of international travel until at least 2022.
Side note, as someone who has always heard friends brag about how much better European consumer protection laws are, it’s both relieving and infuriating to see that the situation in the EU is basically identical to the situation non high-value US customers deal with with airlines.
Lol! I had experiences similar to OPs two or three times. Agents will actively refuse to rebook, if you can get a hold of them at all. They will tell you all kinds of stories: "you booked through a third party, so your contract is with them and they need to rebook", or "I'm not allowed to rebook", or (another classic) "cannot be rebooked and you forfeit your compensation if you rebook yourself".
Honestly, at this point, I consider people suggesting rebooking through an agent as people who rarely or never fly and therefore are very naive about what actually happens in these types of situations.
Guy had flight canceled and wants airlines to have automated refund system.
The issue is though that no company I know of really wants an automated easy path to disperse money back to the public. Ever try to collect on an insurance policy?
1) Initially, the tracking page said the item is late, maybe lost, if it doesn't arrive by X date (2-3 days after it was due), check back here to initiate a replacement / refund.
2) I went back on X date to arrange a refund. You click the button, initially it takes you to an automated chat thing that asks is this the item you are asking about (yes), do you want a refund or replacement (refund)... then it hands you over to a human and you have the same conversation again.
3) Finally, the human issued the refund... but as a gift card / credit without asking me.
In any case, it was a 5-10 minute process hidden behind both automated and non-automated chats, which is stupid and unnecessary, especially considering that these are the people that invented (patented) 1-click. They knew from their own tracking that it was missing, so it could and should have just been a single button for replace vs refund.
I suspect the steps depend on the item / amount involved, some customer risk score, etc, etc, I am sure it's all very elaborate, but in my case it was tedious.
Issuing a gift card is consumer-hostile BS too, should be outlawed if you ask me. I paid for something with money, it didn't show up, so I get the money back, simple. If I wanted to buy a gift card, I would.
Pretty easy in my experience--I expect this process with any other vendor would be much more time-consuming--but as you say it may vary depending on whatever arbitrary factors.
(And, fwiw, the already-delivered package did show up in a couple days. They do regularly mark things as delivered before delivering them.)
This happened to me on an Amazon -> USPS package. I clicked the "still don't have it" button, clicked refund, and saw the money refunded to my card after about 2 days.
Ever wonder why you get "in-store" credit before you get your money back?
Ever wonder why the adjuster offers you 50% of the value for the thing you claim was destroyed?
Why you get offered a check up front rather than what you are due as a result of a litigation?
Why there is a co-pay or a deductible?
Why your medical coverage rejects your first claim?
All these practices are intentional and structured to discourage people from getting what is technically owed them.
Feel free to look up "Unfair Claims Practice" some being illegal and some being just the normal course of business.
I think some companies have taken the view that reducing the amount of administrative overhead for both themselves and passengers is a better long-term investment than trying to weasel out of otherwise reasonable claims. An airline with that kind of policy in place is certainly one which I would be more likely to make subsequent bookings with!
A train ticket from A to B is a contract to arrange travel for you from A to B. If it proves impossible to fulfil the contracted travel on time, it'll be re-arranged and you get compensation for your trouble under Delay Repay.
But the exact same sort of person will buy a ticket from A to B, another from B to C, and one from C to D. Then upon hearing, while waiting at A, that the B-C train is affected by a delay, they book tickets from Z-D and take a taxi to Z to catch that train. Then they're very angry that the train operator wants to compensate them only for the delay on the short B-C journey, rather than pay for their taxi and Z-D ticket.
But the B-C journey operator has absolutely no reason to know you wanted to leave from A or travel to D. You've confused your goal with the quite different contractual arrangement you made.
An A-D ticket might perhaps cost more than your assortment of A-B, B-C, C-D tickets, but that ticket does come with the promise to actually get you from A to D like you wanted, if it's so important that you'd arrange an alternate method to get there, just buy the more expensive ticket that does what you actually wanted and don't act as though the operating companies should read your mind.
Story time:
Some time ago now, I was making a routine journey up the country, I had purchased my ticket which would have me arrive in my destination city about 2300 or so, fifteen minutes walk from my hotel, via London and I set off on time late afternoon. Unfortunately there was a one-under (ie most likely somebody committed suicide, though that's a matter to be decided much later, at the moment it happens they're just a person who is under a train for some reason, the power needs to go off and the lines must be closed while somebody sorts that out) just ahead of us, delaying us by an hour into London. But because the operating companies are responsible for the end-to-end journey I wasn't bothered. I crossed London and arrived far too late for my connection of course, but again the operating companies are responsible for the end-to-end journey and they boarded me onto a later train. This train was scheduled around overnight engineering work so although it was the same physical type of train and the same route as usual, it took about two hours longer, and it would not reach my final destination. Instead it would arrive at about 0150 on the outskirts of an airport some distance away and terminate. The remainder of the railway was closed overnight, and I would travel by road.
Now, I imagine that planners for the operating company concluded that almost all travellers do not want to go to an airport at 0150 or take a coach across country to their real destination afterwards. So they had assumed that this last train of the night would be empty or nearly empty when it finally arrived at the airport. So although they were obliged to arrange onward transit they hadn't bothered.
But because of the one-under there was dozens of us on this last train. At its final calling point was one confused employee. He's expecting maybe one tired person gets off the train, he apologises for lack of onward transit, if he's lucky the person says they'll sort it out because their actual destination is nowhere near a station anyway, otherwise he gets a cab and goes home. Instead he's facing a crowd of dozens. He's going go need at least one coach, to the city they were originally expecting to arrive at three hours ago. He calls his bosses. There are no coaches. Then he telephones every taxi firm in the city, and fleets of taxis begin arriving. Instead of taking people to the railway station they had tickets to, the taxi drivers see it as much simpler to take them wherever they are going directly - the train company picks up the tab either way. So I checked in to my hotel about twenty minutes later.
What's key here is that the expectation of the supplier is correctly aligned to my goal. I wanted to travel to my destination, they wanted to deliver me to that destination. When things went wrong, we both remained clear on the goal and so the resolution was satisfactory.
A late night taxi for each train passenger is obviously horribly expensive and they lost money on that deal. But if I'd gone off piste and tried to get there by some other method from London even if it was cheaper they're under no obligation to compensate me for that, the deal was they get me to the agreed destination.
The airlines seem to have realized that the cost of just ignoring them is easily less than the cost of following them. After all there are a finite number of people able to individually sue you, especially if you’re at the scale where you consistently screw over more customers than there are available court times in a given district.
But why doesn’t that backlog of 100,000 customers waiting to file their claims orchestrate a big class action lawsuit?
This is something to be fixed through regulations. If the rule was "customer has to be provided the compensation to their means of payment automatically, if this is not done, the compensation triples", airlines would quickly find a way to make it happen.
More regulations to force compliance with existing regulations currently being widely ignored? a few years from now you'll be saying more regulations are needed to make sure airlines comply with the regulations that were created to ensure compliance with the original regulations.
I've had exactly the same experience but different departure airport and won (flight didn't go, I bought am immediate replacement seat myself, didn't use the one that was reassigned to me so I could get there faster). I use https://refund.me, excellent success rate and very little effort.
It would be amazing to see the same rules be followed around the world. It's times like these I have a deep respect for the EU. Hm, does this mean that UK flights won't be subject to this going forward?
Seems like they too have thrown in the towel.
Alternatives seem to be:
aireclaim.com
click2refund.com
flight-delayed.co.uk
Others?
The answer is simple: You automate the things that earn you money. You don't automate the things that make you pay money to others - perhaps with the exception of your supply chain or other resources you need to maintain business continuity.
The author is thinking like an engineer, not like a businessperson. Not that there's anything wrong with thinking like an engineer where it's called for, but airlines are profit-seeking businesses.
https://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/small_claims/basic_info....
Mind you, there's a "build footpaths where people walk" aspect here too. If someone is suing lots of people it might be that the law is 'wrong' (contrary to modal picnic views of morality, say) and that the demos don't find the action to be something the law should prohibit?
I'd rewrite this and say that the author is thinking ethically, not like scum.
If the law or regulations say that you must compensate a customer for your failings, you should implement the most efficient system for you to do so (thus both you and the customer win) and focus the remaining resources on making sure you don't have to compensate customers in the first place by avoiding failures (and failures that aren't avoidable should just be accounted for in the price you sell your services).
The way I think of RyanAir or easyJet or the like is a bit like gambling. Maybe 90% of the time you'll get a super cheap flight and everything will go fine, but the other 10% you'll lose your money. In the long term, though, it's a good deal for the passenger.
So I don’t know by what standard you are evaluating them as no better, but by both the objective and subjective standards I propose, they are better.
> Customers are notoriously price sensitive
Is the current system actually cheaper, or is the current system just-as if not more expensive than doing business honestly, except that money is currently being spent on various inefficiencies caused by the current system (PR, customer service having to talk to angry customers, litigation, etc) but "fixing" it is not possible/politically viable as it would put a lot of people (maybe some of the decision-makers themselves) out of a job?
If the law says you have to pay, it seems to me like it would be cheaper to just pay rather than spend money on all kinds of different people trying to work their way out of paying, but since they have those people already it's easier and less politically damaging to keep the current system as-is instead of letting those people go even though they don't actually provide any value (overall they provide negative value, as these people are paid to annoy/lie/waste the customer's time).
Customer service can indeed be variable, and it's up to the company to pick their approach (terrible/no CS and low prices or very good CS and higher prices).
When it comes to complying with the law/regulation, if your company is bound by those laws then it should comply just like every other company does. "Following the law" shouldn't depend on how much you pay; the companies expect the customer to follow the law, so the reverse should apply too.
The problem seems to be that the current law/regulation isn't up to scratch and allows companies to act in bad faith and get away with it (the author is indeed correct that all of this can be made easier through automation and the airline not doing so should be considered obvious evidence of bad faith).
If they show they can happily ignore certain regulations (ie compensation) they we must assume they will ignore / avoid all other regulations. And that has safety implications
in short, like the navy, enforce all the regulations vigorously - or remove regulations you won't enforce.
Maybe it is not possible to operate a well regulated airline that can fly you to Geneva for less than a coach ride to the airport.
And this is why we like science and nature. There is no VC capital approach to disruption of Gravity.
And there are plenty of high quality long/medium haul airlines in general. Singapore airlines is a good example, but in general most Asian flag airlines are rather high quality.
There are always exceptions to the rule, of course. But we're talking about domestic travel in general. AirAsia, for example, is a different beast than Singapore Air or EVA Airways.
The Darwinian beauty of capitalism is that a firm that sacrifices maximum business efficiency for ethics will be destroyed and replaced by ones that do not have this defect.
No, attaching yourself to popular interests as a marketing strategy isn't sacrificing gains for ethics. Nor is it “ethics” even if some instances of it use “ethical” or a synonym in the branding.
Ethics is doing right because it's right. Making an outward show of ethics where it is advantageous to make a sale (Eve if what you are selling is advice to others on where to put their money) is not ethics, it is commercial exploitation of others ethics.
From a pragmatic point of view, I'd argue that as long as certain ethical standards are (in fact) upheld, the distinction doesn't matter, but I concede that this is a view that not everyone would share.
> Ethics is doing right because it's right. Making an outward show of ethics where it is advantageous to make a sale (Eve if what you are selling is advice to others on where to put their money) is not ethics, it is commercial exploitation of others ethics.
Yes, but why are you assuming that no business exists that can do (at least some) things because they are right?
If such a business exists, than it's hard to see how Darwinian capitalism would lead to its destruction and replacement, given the aforementioned popular interest.
In theory, if some individuals do things because they are right, and some of those individuals are business owners, than transitively, some businesses that do things because they are right should exist.
In practice, there are plenty of non-profit foundations motivated by doing things because they are right, and which operate for-profit businesses in direct or indirect support of their motives. Management is appointed by ownership and tasked to execute the business as ownership intends, which at least occasionally means that sometimes, things are being done because they are right.
As a practical example, it's hard to imagine a (hypothetical) mosquito net manufacturing business owned by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation operating in violation of the foundation's ethical position.
Which business except Silicon Valley 'valuation unicorns' isn't?
His entire claim is based on a paragraph of the directive for 'cancellations'. Authors claim is that the flight was 'cancelled' and a 'new' flight was put on the next day, and that this is a cancellation because the flight number changed. This definition is tenuous - Airlines can (and do) swap flight numbers and even physical aircraft and this would not class as a cancellation (and this is what the appeals found in this case). A cancellation realistically means that the airline could not transport the customer to the destination at all, and the 'flight' was cancelled rather than being rescheduled to another time.
Airlines claim is that his flight was rescheduled, and he declined to even go on the rescheduled flight and then expected compensation in-line with a cancellation. This is probably fairly accurate.
So if it's not a cancellation, what does the legislation actually say his compensation should be?
* (a) meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time
* (b) hotel accommodation
* (c) transport between the airport and place of accommodation (hotel or other).
* 2. Two telephone calls, telex or fax messages, or e-mails.
* 3. (If longer than 5 hours) Reimbursement within seven days, by the means provided for in Article 7(3), of the full cost of the ticket at the price at which it was bought, for the part or parts of the journey not made.
Noting that there is no cash alternative to a, b & c (which isn't explicitly stated, but is implied in the article) the request of c€125 implied in his article is not covered under the relevant parts of this European directive.
Note: This is only my view on reading it but it seems pretty clear, but IANAL!
In the US at least they’re associated with companies preying on people and they never seem to actually achieve much in practice except for lawyers.
I would say they are a consumer rights problem, not a solution to consumer rights problems.
It’s because there is no way to sue them for an amount of money big enough to make a difference. The best you as an individual can do is sue for a few bucks. Who had time for that? So you assume that’s just the way things are. You get screwed.
But they don’t have to be that way. If only a lawyer could sue the company on behalf of all the customers for all those tiny injustices. All those injustices together would add up to real money that might make companies think twice. It would also add up to enough to motivate a lawyer to take the case with no upfront payment.
So I understand if you don’t care about $7 checks, but that’s not the point. The point is a check on bad corporate actors that screw you, but just gently enough to that you don’t personally sue them.
The popular perception of class action in the US, is something like, "yes, Kitchenpal knowingly sold thousands of Blenders that sparked out and caught fire, and burned like 50 people's houses down. But luckily your class-action lawsuit came through 10 years later with a check worth $3.22 as compensation"
Further, as the parent post points out, the compensation to the individual is low. Even if the lawyers made nothing, what does the plaintiff care? $3 or $6? What does it matter? But the point isn’t compensating the plaintiff. The point is punishing the defendants and creating some kind of deterrent.
Also, most recipients of the 5 euro awards do literally nothing. The check just shows up.
What more do you want? Or more to the point, what alternative do you propose?
But, as the article perhaps alludes to, the tide may be changing on that due to legal industry automation. If law firms can file nearly identical lawsuites at scale then the incentives can again favor consumers and employees. This may not have happened in this particular case due to courts being unable to scale, but it has happened to companies like DoorDash. See https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/business/story/...
Why not? Bill the loser for court fees.
If the cases have merit, the target company will be financially ruined.
This seems to be a better deterrent to bad corporate behaviour than a class action suit where the settlement for 100,000 claims is 15 million, where the lawyers keep 99% of it.
The court simply threw out my case because it was "overloaded".
I think Easyjet might be exploiting this loophole to avoid paying customers whom they've fucked over.
I had another case against a different business which I launched and got thrown out because the courts were overloaded too.
The UK courts system appears to be horrendously underautomated. It was a mess of scanned written forms and calling up people to read credit card numbers over the phone. They really should deduct a ton of points on those "ease of doing business" metrics for this mess.
1. Customer turns up.
2. Plane leaves within a certain range around scheduled time.
3. Plane arrives at destination.
4. Plane arrives at destination within a certain range around the scheduled time.
5. The price of the trip.
6. Weather events make things difficult.
Airlines could either integrate or not.
Maybe the premiums would have to be higher due to a higher occurrence of payouts, but maybe they wouldn't have to be so high due to the number of claims processing people you now do not have to employ.
Maybe I am oversimplifying.
> we could see the registration number: G-EZRU. The exact same plane that had flown out of Geneva, had both its pressure systems fail, had been known to have other problems in its service history
When you get the first couple of “technically a lie but an excusable lie”-responds they pick out a couple of layers of complains each, then when you reach out the the “no win no fee” I’m certain their first 1-2 layers back to you are just steps in the same process “you might have a case but could take this small payment” “you have a case but it will take for ever, here’s a slightly higher offer” and these can be quickly negotiated because they just split the damage with the airline.
They have a multilevel yearlong process of starving our customers from extremely reasonable compensations, which they have deviously optimized so they can sell tickets at what? Maybe 10-20% lower rates and steal the high-volumes low rate market.
I think it’s naive to believe that this is all progressing without a level of collaboration between them and the airline that is at least unethical and potentially illegal.
I had similar situation a couple years ago and ended up using Airhelp.com to obtain my compensation. They took a cut of course but I had to do pretty much nothing beyond sending them my itinerary and I got a bank transfer in a couple of weeks. I am of course unaffiliated.
I got a very close friend working for Wizz. He told me that this is the boilerplate BS email they send to all such requests, to scare them off. Reading it one may thing "oh there may have been a terror-related thing, better not bother the CIA-FBI-NSA-PoPo-MI5-MI6-MI99... and that I should reach out to the responsible regulator and I'd get my money back. Which I did. I included the BS email. I assume the regulator didn't buy the BS email from Wizz and I got paid. 3 months later, but Wizz lying bastards didn't get away with it.
Ideally, there are conditions in which you get automatic compensation, in the form of a payment to your bank (as easily as you give company money they can give it to you).
If the tech is there to send a business money so can they send it to me if they don't provide a good service, it's not difficult.
We're so advanced with our developments in AI yet so many things are basic and stuck in the past. This shouldn't even be down to airlines - it's a system that does all the work on behalf of the customer and business.
Businesses just aren't optimizing for the things they hate. They'd rather do all they can to hide it and forget to mention it to you, if it weren't illegal (and sometimes, still then). They will only do the letter of the law, and only to go through the motions, and only if the penalties for not are high and the risk of getting caught is equally high.
It's shitty stuff from the airlines for sure. But AFAIK, they all do this at this level.
This also means if you are flying there and back the same day, if there is a delay on the outbound flight and you miss the return flight it's considered a no show, so they don't need to compensate you.
Out of all of them, EasyJet was the only company that let me have an instant refund on their website. Most of the others made me call them (I was on the Alitalia line for 90 minutes, after hours of being flatout rejected from the call queue), some I had to issue a chargeback, and some refunded me in November. One I’m still waiting.
I also booked the Bernina Express and the only refund option is to show up at one of their stations in Switzerland I guess.
This is to say that most travel companies operate in a similar non-automated fashion because that’s what makes them the most money. EasyJet is far from the exception.
I guess although engaging the lawyer seems optional at first glance, it is really the only way to get anything done.
I don't understand how anyone can fall for this after all this time. It's the case with all law. The politicians are not there for the people.
Over time it’s a surprisingly subtle corruption of our legal system.
The difference between calling something peanut butter and peanut spread might not seem that important, but it’s those exact invisible laws and regulations that end up being critical.
Instead they chose to pursue a third option the law didn't cover and purchased their own choice of alternative flight. Its not the law's fault that if people choose alternatives they don't have a statutory right to be compensated for when dealing with the sort of company that isn't inclined to be generous, they don't get resolution until the company decides it doesn't want the risk and cost of fighting any further.
It pretty clearly is exactly "the law's fault" when you are of the opinion that those alternatives that aren't statutory rights should be.
If they didn't, I think it would more than double the price of some tickets.
Sometimes I fly hundreds of miles for 10 euros (all taxes and fees included). There is no way a business can offer a refund of 300 euros if that flight is delayed.
Compensation should be an optional feature - I should be able to spend an extra 30 euros on my flight to get compensation in case of delay. Ask me when I book. Just like other insurance.
The thing is when do you ever just spend €10 on a flight? Once you add in checked luggage, the priority carry on so you can take more than a packet of crisps onboard, assigned seats so you can sit next to whoever else you are flying with, and extra legroom so you don't end up with leg injuries, you are paying closer to €100. These companies are making serious bank.
Looking around flights, I suspect at least half of passengers do the same as me.
> my partner
What per cent of the time is this "romantic, or maybe even life" or "business" partner? When married, the term "spouse" is always preferable.
- jgalt's style guide
It generally means 'boyfriend or girlfriend' but over the age of something like 25 when boyfriend or girlfriend starts to sound a little awkward to some people's ears. People get married a lot later these days, or not at all if they don't wish to.
Of course people may use it to mean anything they want. But it's simple - if someone refers to their guest as 'partner' do them the courtesy of also using that term.
Definitely not the case for professional firms such as management consultancies, accountants, and law firms.
I have been on a Viber travel group supporting people trying to get into Croatia. It consists of many American citizens. Anyways, over the past couple of days, Delta/United/Iberia have been using artificial intelligence (AI) to /automatically update/ where people can or cannot go, based off of government websites. Instead of having proper staff to look over these requirements, they use AI to screw over their customers, as the AI has errors in its interpretations for documentation required by travelers.
There have been a few people on this Viber group who have been wrongly denied boarding, right before their Christmas holiday, due to inconsistencies in the interpretations of the AI (multiple errors, type 1 and type 2), from the company Smartvel. Sadly, people of color have been the ones getting stopped more and denied boarding in the US.
This is the technology that I am talking about: https://www.smartvel.com/covid19-entry-restrictions/
This is the API plugin on Delta.com for Smartvel (fill out the to: Croatia from: USA): https://www.delta.com/us/en/plan-your-next-trip/where-we-fly
This is the API plugin on United.com for Smartvel (fill out the to: Croatia from: USA): https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/restrictions-map...
Ironically, if you booked online using KLM.com (affiliated with Delta but a European airline) or Lufthansa.com (affiliated with United but a European airline) you were not subjected to this problem, even though it was the same flight through a codeshare arrangement via the airlines.
It really is inhumane. While people may not want people flying due to the coronavirus (honestly, I don't but Croatia does need the business and I want them to see my country too), these people had their plans made and their holidays were ruined over AI. It is cruel.
By the way, I am a dual US|Croatian citizen, and if Croatia allows third country nationals, such as Americans in, then I think they should be allowed in. Also, if you spend 14 days in Croatia as an American, you can basically enter the EU without issue, but you may want to check https://reopen.europa.eu/ for entry restrictions, country-to-country. It is a loophole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Celera_500L
Mentour Pilot's assessment: https://youtu.be/CN4EKZHYVaE