Update: They now have an annual fee option of $49 annually. I still think that is prohibitively expensive.
Service is a website that monitors your flight itineraries in your inbox for delayed or cancelled flights, specifically looking for instances where you should receive compensation from the airline. If you receive any compensation, they take 30% for their troubles otherwise their is no charge. This is actually a fairly common business model these days (e.g we also see automated price protection with Sift and car rental savings with AutoSlash).
Signing up requires connecting your e-mail account (seems to be restricted to gmail and hotmail) and giving them access to your inbox, they then search your e-mails for flight itineraries to see if you’ve been the subject of any delay or cancellation. If you are then they file a claim. It seems to be restricted to flights in Europe & USA. When giving them access to your gmail account, they having the following privileges:
- View and modify your mail in Gmail
- May move mail to Spam/Trash but not instantly delete forever
- Create, update, and delete labels
- Compose and send new email
- View your settings (e.g., filters and labels)
Referral Program
They offer a referral program, if you sign up using a referral link you get $20 off your first claim. The person referring you will also get $20 off their next claim. Please do not share your referral links in the comments, instead they can be shared on this post.
Downsides
- Security/privacy. The major issue with this types of service is giving them access to your e-mail inbox. Every time you give access like this away you’re increasing your risk of your account becoming compromised.
- Miles valuations. They charge you a 30% fee, in a lot of cases airlines will give you miles as compensation. They use The Points Guys valuations when determining the fee you pay, I personally think that TPG’s valuations are over inflated causing the fee to be realistically higher than 30%. I’d say that a more conservative valuation of 1¢ per mile is fair in this instance.
Our Verdict
If I’m eligible for compensation under EU Regulation 261/2004, then I definitely want to do it myself as the compensation is €250 to €600. Personally I think a fee of up to €180 for filing that claim is excessive. It doesn’t seem like there is any way to choose when they do/don’t file a complaint (I guess this would defeat the purpose as people would just select no after they found the option) so I won’t be using this service. I guess if you normally wouldn’t do this yourself then it’s kind of a no lose situation (apart from the significant security/privacy concerns). If anybody has used the service successfully or unsuccessfully I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Hat tip to Wolfe1 as that’s where I originally heard of this
