Recent experience of SAS EU261 claim handling.

Domestic flight in Sweden delayed 3½ hrs. I filed the claim online and after 2½ months of submitting the claim contacted them with online chat, as hadn't heard anything from them. The agent told they had made decision and sent it to me already 2 weeks after making the claim, but I hadn't received their reply. The agent said he'll contact the other department to resend it to me in 1-2 weeks. After 4 weeks I contacted them again and this time the chat agent said that they do not handle this kind of issues and that the previous agent had given wrong information. So obviously there hadn't been any progress with my case. Next I contacted them via email and to my surprise got reply one hour later. They had rejected my claim, the reason being that the delay was less than 3hrs, which is the limit for shorter flights. I proved that wrong by indicating the actual arrival time and scheduled arrival time, delay in reality being 3½ hrs. Got reply, now they rejected my claim because I had filed the claim too late, making case that Swedish Supreme Court had ruled that consumer claims should be made within 2 months. I proved also that wrong, as I had filed the claim within that 2 month period. Then after a few days of silence I got reply telling that they have approved my claim, and now I also got the money to my bank account.

Lessons learned:
- Make sure you file the claim within 2 months
- They very clearly try all the tricks to shoot down your claim by new and new arguments and wait you to end the process
- Keep all the documents, also record the actual arrival time
- Be ready to prove their arguments wrong and be persistent
- Don't trust information you get from their customer service

It's disappointing to find this kind of handling in a very clear case, it simply doesn't increase trust to the airline.