Had a similar story with British Airways. My flight was cancelled last moment and I was rebooked for the next day - changing my direct flight to an inconvenient connection and arriving to the final destination over 24hrs late.
When I filled out compensation form they first lied to me about who operated the flight: it's not us, it's our codeshare! Once we sorted it out they lied about the distance: your disrupted journey was less than 1,500km, so here is less then half of your compensation (for a flight from London to San Francisco). I eventually got my full compensation, but it took several months of back and forth.
Airlines will absolutely lie to you, in writing, about the things that are trivial to verify. I guess there's no downside to them - in the best case some people may settle for no or smaller compensation, in the worst case they pay what they were supposed to pay anyway.
AF also tried to pull the codeshare thing with me once. Didn't want to go around in circles with customer service and found it easier to initiate litigation. AF then hired a big law firm to defend the tiny case.
A week before a scheduled court hearing their lawyer calls me to negotiate. I tell her there is nothing to negotiate about, and she agrees. We chat for an hour anyway which was surely billed to her client AF. I receive full payment two days later.
Interesting, I had a comp case with BA but it was very easy. Likely because they were clearly at fault (mechanical failure) but all I had to do was fill in one form and I had my money 3 months later.
I think the experience is circumstantial and definitely depends on how 'obviously' in fault the airlines is. All in all I came out with a profit of £200 but can't say 24 hours at an airport is worth it honestly.
How is it in California/Bay Area? Anyone still does 1099 directly? What do you do for one-off short term gigs? Form an LLC with all the fees and paperwork that entails? Give a cut to a middleman?
When I filled out compensation form they first lied to me about who operated the flight: it's not us, it's our codeshare! Once we sorted it out they lied about the distance: your disrupted journey was less than 1,500km, so here is less then half of your compensation (for a flight from London to San Francisco). I eventually got my full compensation, but it took several months of back and forth.
Airlines will absolutely lie to you, in writing, about the things that are trivial to verify. I guess there's no downside to them - in the best case some people may settle for no or smaller compensation, in the worst case they pay what they were supposed to pay anyway.