When it comes to delayed or canceled flights, there’s a typical scenario that ensues. At the boarding gate, you might send a Tweet (my flight late yo! @jetblue) because it’s 2017. The airline puts you on the next flight out, with no change fee, and you get home a little annoyed but happy to be out of that mess. Then, you move on with your life.
Sound familiar?
It’s a situation you have likely been a part of many times, and you wish you could have gotten compensated — but at this point, you just consider delays and cancellations one of the unfortunate woes of flying.
But last-minute delays and cancellations are more than an inconvenience. You have passenger rights that entitle you to compensation (of course, the airlines won’t ever tell you this), and there’s an app that’s going to get you money you deserve. Lots of it.
Behold: Service, your digital knight in shining armor. Service is a new travel service that goes through all your past flights (up to a year) to determine whether an airline owes you money from flight delays or cancellations. Behind Service are actual human beings that do all the grunt work, contacting the airline and fighting on your behalf if you are owed anything from previously delayed or canceled flights. As we know, airlines are stingy and will do everything they can to withhold any monies owed, so Service gets all Law & Order on them until they finally fork over decent compensation. The best part? You do nothing. You sit back with a margarita, watch Real Housewives and play Scrabble while all of this happens behind the scenes.
Eventually, if and when Service wins the case for a delayed or canceled flight you were booked on, they notify you via email, and the compensation received goes directly to you via airline credit or air miles, while Service keeps 30 percent. The cut seems like a lot, but you literally didn’t lift a finger the whole time and you would have never gotten this compensation without them because you had no idea it was even possible. So, it’s a win-win for everyone.
As soon as you sign up with Service, it gets to work. Service scours through your emails to find all flight confirmations in the past year, then they confirm any delayed or canceled flights you may be entitled for compensation (Note: For now, Service only works with Gmail, so if you use any other email (like me.com) to book flights, you need to forward those to your Gmail or input flights manually into your Service profile to see if they are a match for compensation).
Then, when they find a delayed or canceled flight, they will notify you, like so. If you wish to proceed (duh, of course you do), they file the claim for you directly with the airline while you continue with your day drinking margaritas and watching Housewives.
After a few days, they email you back to tell you the results. If they could not receive compensation, you are not charged any fees, no loss for anyone. If you do get a settlement, you will receive an email notification detailing the compensation.
See below. This was for a Delta flight I took back in July, which was delayed a few hours. As you can see, Delta was pretty strict on not giving me any monetary compensation, but they did offer 8,000 Skymiles (value $96, so the 30 percent cut of $28.80 went to Service). But hey, 8,000 is a lot of miles. I cashed out all my Delta miles to fly my mom to Korea and back in first class with Delta, and this would not have been possible without Service as I was 6,000 miles short at the time!
Another example below. Service got me a $50 voucher with American Airlines for a delayed flight I took in March.
After Service’s cut ($15), it left me with $35, but again, I would have never have known I was owed that money if it wasn’t for Service. I am totally addicted to Service, and I now feel better with delays and cancellations knowing someone is fighting to get me compensation I deserve!
