Vallari

Dear fellow flyers,

Are we (I and my wife) the only ones struggling with LH to pay out to agreed flight delay (EU 261/2004) compensation?

As context, we flow already in early July and the return trip from Lisbon via Munich to Helsinki had the first leg delayed beyond us reaching the second leg. We were then rerouted by LH to TAP flight to HEL later that day/night resulting in total delay of 7 hours or so. Such delays do happen but what has followed is getting beyond my comprehension.

I submitted feedback forms/claims from LH website for both of us (we had separate tickets/bookings). The first thing that struck me as somewhat sub-optimal was that there was no acknowledgement from LH of receiving the feedback (this only came after a few days). Then after 8 days my wife receives a reply from LH regretting the delay and offering the standard 400 euro compensation. I receive similar response a few days later.

We submit for both the required details (including the photo of passport with the person in question discusses in at least one other thread). I received the compensation about a month after the flight but now the problems start for my wife's compensation.

I had submitted the above mentioned documents (e.g. boarding passes, which one might guess the airline already sort of had) for both of us from my email, but since we had different bookings it seemed that the LH systems/processes broke down at this point. After this I got an reply that I needed a PoA to act for my wife after which she resent the documents/info from her email. This has now been followed with a numerous emails asking for her passport picture again from both her email and mine, telling me that my compensation can't be paid out (it's already paid out).

Each email seems to be followed by about 1-2 weeks of delay before any response, which then as mentioned above typically makes one feel like being in some sort of Kafka-type world.

It's beginning to be both a matter of principle as well as of course 400 euros already being agreed. We're both flying enough to understand that delays and such inconveniences do happen, but the handling of this and the resulting customer experience just at least to me doesn't really make sense.

Here I was mainly wanting to understand is this the new standard LH (I had a delay with them last year and that was handled very professionally) or are we just being extremely unlucky here.

Best regards,
Jussi Vallinkoski