golfingboy

My experiences YTD:

March 2010
LAX-ATL [10:55PM flight]: $400, hotel voucher at LAX Crowne Plaza hotel, 2 meal vouchers covering dinner and breakfast, and rebooked into F.

April 2010
ATL-SLC [12:10PM flight IIRC]- $400, one meal voucher covering lunch, plus rebook on a later flight (4 hours or so). Ended up GA did not need my seat due to several misconnects.

May 2010
JFK-LAX [9:30PM flight]- $200, hotel voucher, and meal vouchers covering dinner and breakfast, rebooked on the next flight in the middle seat.

For JFK-LAX if they offer $200 and requires overnight stay, ditch it or negotiate for more compensation... $200 is not worth it, too much headache, unless you live near the airport. The GA wanted to limit my options to flights that only had the same fare class or lower which would have limited my options to only 2 flights, the 7AM flight or 9:30PM flight. I went like "mhmm, are you kidding me?" and I elected to deal with the other GA who rebooked me into Y, so I could pick whatever flight I wanted.

Bottom line, if the flight is longer than 3.5 hours and requires overnight stay, fight for $400 period. Do not be suckered into a measly $200 compensation like me. Learned my lesson the hard way. If they refuse to increase my compensation, I would stand in front of the line and board at the very last minute and get IDBed, where the compensation is two times more.