Lawyers automate this, so why don't airlines?

I have had that bot say "wait a few days" (after the package had been reported delivered), but yeah, it's generally quick and easy.

(And, fwiw, the already-delivered package did show up in a couple days. They do regularly mark things as delivered before delivering them.)

Low cost is the key. Normal cost airlines are more friendly. They have the ability to do things that discount airlines don't care to.

Slightly different but similarly annoying situation happened to me. Was flying back from Birmingham to Berlin, via Dusseldorf (with Eurowings, booked via Lufthansa). There was bad weather at Dusseldorf so the outgoing flight was delayed by an hour or so. Knowing that any passenger arriving at Dusseldorf would arrive at ~8:30pm, and thus miss their connecting flights for the day - they still insisted on people flying there. We arrived, and were stranded - obviously. Their agents closed the booth and tried to leave, but after a bunch of discussion they then wanted to put people on buses or trains to various parts of Germany overnight. A few of us demanded accommodation and ended up staying in the nearby hotel. After like 10 emails back and forth over the next week with the airline they ended up refusing to pay compensation, so I raised a claim with the consumer arbitration board in the country I live (soep-online.de). Two days later I get an email from the airline saying they'll pay out. It seems so utterly scummy that they try lie and deceive consumers out of their rights - how are there not strict punishments in situations where airlines mislead and screw over consumers?

The legitimacy of governments and of courts is primarily by belief - eg the courts are legitimate because most people believe that they are. There seem to be a lot of people out there who don’t understand this concept and don’t understand that western societies are not immune to mass unrest or violence or even insurrection. In particular it seems like courts and legislatures are failing at their most basic tasks in many western countries. I hope that in Europe that the legislatures or the courts intervene precipitously in these kinds of widespread fraud by corporations; a few executives going to jail as an example to others would quickly correct the situation. Otherwise this eats away at the credibility of the government in general and you just see more lawlessness.

For Delay Repay you'll get the same sort of nonsense this post is about from travellers whose expectations don't match reality.

A train ticket from A to B is a contract to arrange travel for you from A to B. If it proves impossible to fulfil the contracted travel on time, it'll be re-arranged and you get compensation for your trouble under Delay Repay.

But the exact same sort of person will buy a ticket from A to B, another from B to C, and one from C to D. Then upon hearing, while waiting at A, that the B-C train is affected by a delay, they book tickets from Z-D and take a taxi to Z to catch that train. Then they're very angry that the train operator wants to compensate them only for the delay on the short B-C journey, rather than pay for their taxi and Z-D ticket.

But the B-C journey operator has absolutely no reason to know you wanted to leave from A or travel to D. You've confused your goal with the quite different contractual arrangement you made.

An A-D ticket might perhaps cost more than your assortment of A-B, B-C, C-D tickets, but that ticket does come with the promise to actually get you from A to D like you wanted, if it's so important that you'd arrange an alternate method to get there, just buy the more expensive ticket that does what you actually wanted and don't act as though the operating companies should read your mind.

Story time:

Some time ago now, I was making a routine journey up the country, I had purchased my ticket which would have me arrive in my destination city about 2300 or so, fifteen minutes walk from my hotel, via London and I set off on time late afternoon. Unfortunately there was a one-under (ie most likely somebody committed suicide, though that's a matter to be decided much later, at the moment it happens they're just a person who is under a train for some reason, the power needs to go off and the lines must be closed while somebody sorts that out) just ahead of us, delaying us by an hour into London. But because the operating companies are responsible for the end-to-end journey I wasn't bothered. I crossed London and arrived far too late for my connection of course, but again the operating companies are responsible for the end-to-end journey and they boarded me onto a later train. This train was scheduled around overnight engineering work so although it was the same physical type of train and the same route as usual, it took about two hours longer, and it would not reach my final destination. Instead it would arrive at about 0150 on the outskirts of an airport some distance away and terminate. The remainder of the railway was closed overnight, and I would travel by road.

Now, I imagine that planners for the operating company concluded that almost all travellers do not want to go to an airport at 0150 or take a coach across country to their real destination afterwards. So they had assumed that this last train of the night would be empty or nearly empty when it finally arrived at the airport. So although they were obliged to arrange onward transit they hadn't bothered.

But because of the one-under there was dozens of us on this last train. At its final calling point was one confused employee. He's expecting maybe one tired person gets off the train, he apologises for lack of onward transit, if he's lucky the person says they'll sort it out because their actual destination is nowhere near a station anyway, otherwise he gets a cab and goes home. Instead he's facing a crowd of dozens. He's going go need at least one coach, to the city they were originally expecting to arrive at three hours ago. He calls his bosses. There are no coaches. Then he telephones every taxi firm in the city, and fleets of taxis begin arriving. Instead of taking people to the railway station they had tickets to, the taxi drivers see it as much simpler to take them wherever they are going directly - the train company picks up the tab either way. So I checked in to my hotel about twenty minutes later.

What's key here is that the expectation of the supplier is correctly aligned to my goal. I wanted to travel to my destination, they wanted to deliver me to that destination. When things went wrong, we both remained clear on the goal and so the resolution was satisfactory.

A late night taxi for each train passenger is obviously horribly expensive and they lost money on that deal. But if I'd gone off piste and tried to get there by some other method from London even if it was cheaper they're under no obligation to compensate me for that, the deal was they get me to the agreed destination.