In all my years of flying, I had never needed to make a compensation claim for delayed flights or missing baggage. This all changed in July when I finally had a substantial disruption to a trip to Australia I booked with British Airways.
Once the trip was over, I put in a claim with the airline for my out of pocket expenses. Around the same time, another claim went in to my travel insurance for my delayed baggage.
Waiting For Compensation
When my delayed baggage finally arrived home after a 19 day holiday without me, I sent all the relevant details to my travel insurance provider. They had been contacted six days after it went AWOL, so I had a case number and all I had to do was send everything else in.
It is now almost seven weeks since that was sent in. All I have received was acknowledgement that the e-mail was received and that due to a high volume of queries, someone will respond as soon as possible. Tick tock, I’m still waiting!
That particular one went in on 12 July, so it is now two months of waiting. E-mails regularly came out in the first four weeks, apologising for the delay, but nothing since 16 August. Lucky I am patient!
Overall Thoughts
I am quite understanding in this instance. The widely publicised issues at the start of July that I was caught up in means that there are likely a stack of claims outstanding. That is all well and good.
Even so, great customer service would be giving a date as to when someone would expect an answer. If they said, “We will get back to you before 1 October 2022”, then I would not have to keep it in mind until that date. With no date, I have to keep it front of mind to make sure I remember to follow up if it goes on much longer, which is slightly irritating.
Some people would also be greatly put out by the financial outlay and require their money back. Quite frankly, the younger me would have been clamoring for the money back, as I was not as disciplined with finances as I am now. Even so, it’s still a large chunk of change, so the sooner it’s resolved, the better.
How long do you think is reasonable to wait for compensation before following up? What are your experiences when it comes to timelines? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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I had to cancel an expensive trip for medical reasons early this year. I filed a claim on January 17th. Twice I’ve supplied additional documentation. The only response is my claim will be reviewed.
Wow, that’s dire! I hope you have followed up with them. You’d think after nine months they would have come back to you.
Many follow ups by phone and email. Two weeks ago I was told I should hear from them in 10 business days. Those days are up this Friday, You can bet I’ll be bugging them then. Thanks for your sympathy.
Fingers crossed!!
One month at the most, 2 weeks should be the mid and 3 days should be the norm.
I agree with you on this, though I’d give some wiggle room on the three days. I suppose the issue is that when something happens, it tends to get a lot of people at once, delaying everyone’s claims.
I had the misfortune of a cancelled flight by Easyjet. They “make it easy” to file a compensation claim using an on-line form, but the form would not accept an American formatted bank account number. With multiple acknowledgments of the issue by their customer non-service group back in June, 3 months later I cannot even get a response. It seems that they will do whatever possible to m make it difficult to file such a claim.
That must be really annoying for you. I’m not very surprised that the form does not accept an American bank account, as they really are geared to Europe. A shame you don’t know someone in the UK, so you could use their account and then have them transfer it on to you. Good luck with it and thanks for sharing your experience!