Originally Posted by
canadiancow
And while I agree 100% with that statement, there are benefits to the community in filing the complaints with the regulatory bodies.
You can tell 100 people to initiate a chargeback, and they'll win. But then you have to tell the next 100 people.
If the first 100 just file the proper regulatory complaint, it's much more likely that chargebacks won't be required.
The trouble is that there's no equivalent of the US DOT's easy online form. Filing an EU261 complaint against an airline can be a real hassle. Here's the
UK's page on how to do it (since that's what's applicable to
Mikey Mike Mike ). The process is summarized in this flow chart, but in short, you can either (i) take the airline to court or (ii)(a) go through alternative dispute resolution (essentially a 3rd party tries to resolve it) or, if (a) is not available, (b) appeal to the regulator.
It's quite the hassle to file a complaint, and I don't know that it actually does anything to change the airline's behaviour, given that many EU carriers are regularly accused of violating EU261 rules. That's why I wouldn't recommend someone go through the hassle of that process when a chargeback should be simple and highly likely to be successful.
(Note that there are firms that specialize in EU261 complaints, and in the case of compensation for a delay or something like that where there's no obvious mechanism to recoup what's owed by the airline, it may be worthwhile to engage one of them, but when a simple chargeback should result in a 100% refund, paying them their 30% or whatever cut isn't worth it)