Court success thread

Vauban

This thread is so very old and buried it needed an archaeological expedition to retrieve it, but it struck me that anyone currently going through the legal process with the airlines might find this worth reading - lots of good anecdotal evidence to show that a) the court process isn't too scary and b) the airlines struggled to win the cases when claimants presented them right.

It made me a bit nostalgic, truth be told, to see these old posts and relive what felt like ground-breaking times. Happy days! :beer:

zptlondon

This thread is a little old, but in case anyone is still reading...

My partner and I flew from London Heathrow to Hanoi in August 2015 with Vietnam Airlines. The flight arrived over 4 hours later so I was due for a EU flight delay compensation. I took a picture of the arrivals board in Hanoi, because no one in Vietnam Airlines at Hanoi Airport knew about this compensation rule. I didn't want to make a fuss there and then, as we were just starting a holiday. I had a similar delay before when Swiss just gave me cash as soon as I landed. If it weren't for that, I don't think I would have known about the rule.

When we returned to the UK, I contacted Vietnam Airlines offices in Heathrow. They seemed like a small outfit, and it was very hard to get hold of anyone. I managed to speak to one reasonable sounding person but in the end he didn't send me the claim from he promised. So I wrote them a letter to give them 2 weeks to respond to my claim or I would go to court. I received no response.

At the end of September, I made a money claim on moneyclaim.gov.uk, which was easy to fill out. I just described the situation and the relevant EU statute, and paid the 60 pounds court fee.

On 8 October, I received a Notice of Issue from the County Court Business Centre, along with a copy of the claim form which was sent to the defendant. It gave the defendant until 27th October to respond. At this point, Vietnam Airlines contacted me by phone but I told them I will only withdraw the claim now if they pay me the compensation plus Court Fee (880+60 = 940) upon which they tried to negotiate to pay a lower amount, which I thought was quite funny. I refused and told them they can respond to the court.

Vietnam Airlines didn't respond, so the court issued an automatic judgement against them on 28th October. At this point, the court wrote to me to advise me of this fact. I called the County Court Business Centre, and they advised me to contact Vietnam Airlines to claim the money I am now owed. Again, I wrote to Vietnam Airlines with the letter of judgement, but did not receive a response. I actually forgot about this until Christmas.

Then during Christmas holidays, I decided to enforce the claim with a warrant. This cost me another 70 pounds for the court to send a bailiff. At this point, I was a bit worried because I had already paid 60 pounds court fee, and to pay more for the chance of receiving the full amount back felt like a gamble. But I didn't want to give back. So the warrant was issued on the 29 December 2015, and again I received the confirmation of this from the County Court.

It actually took the bailiffs several attempts to recover the money, but after 3 months on 31 March 2016, I received a letter from the County Court confirming that they had recovered the money from Vietnam Airlines. This included the 70 pounds warrant fee, so in total I was owed 1,010 pounds. In April 2016, a few weeks later, the court sent me a cheque (in their name) for the full amount.

So all in all, from the delayed flight in August 2015 to receiving the cheque from the court in April 2016, it took 8 months! I was very annoyed that Vietnam Airlines tried to fob me off by not answering calls and asking to negotiate after the court process started, but in the end it worked out well. I guess this is their strategy to try to get people to give up along the way, so if you have a similar experience, don't give up and go through the whole process with a lot of patience!

JPears

And I wonder how many other people on this flight either:
1. Weren't aware they could claim compensation, given that it is a legal requirement for the airline to inform them of this.
2. Accepted the lack of responses or fobs offs from Vietnam Airlines
?