The fact that there is an entire business model built around helping passengers claim their rights due to the reluctance of airlines to attend to their duties should already be an alarm signal.

There are sites that charge a fortune to fill an esta in on your behalf too. Just because a scam is successful doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the normal way.

Same with tax refunds in my country, where its doable online in like, a half hour.

You can pay a company to do it for you, and onboarding with them takes longer than a half hour.

I used them in the past and they worked, but a colleague told me I was being an idiot and should do it myself. He was right, at least with British Airways, there's an online form that you fill out and money appears in your account. It took the same amount of effort as Airhelp.

I would use them only after trying to do it yourself.

Does not work with low costs :) They'll just say 'extraordinary circumstances'.

My daughter was trying to come home from university this summer and they canceled her flight twice while she was in line at security. Guess what Wizzair said.

She has claims opened with Airhelp now, we'll see what happens.

I would only resort to services like that if your case is really stuck, in my experince (with 4 different airlines).

A quick e-mail to the airline with the order number, stating the expected flight plan, and comparing it with the actual flight plan and a calculated delay have always worked, even with the cheaper airlines.

"Small cut" was 30% in my last experience.