Our favorite fluff blog TechCrunch isn’t quite sure what AirHelp’s status is, they have either already raised $12 Million, “AirHelp raises $12 million to deal with airline customer service for you” or they are currently trying to raise $12 million, “For hassle-free travel, AirHelp is raising $12 million in Series A funding from a group of investors including Khosla Ventures and Evan Williams.”
The world may never know…
What is AirHelp?
Oh it’s a startup that charges 25% of your total claim, a $20 annual membership, AND a $30 money transfer fee to actually see the money that they found you.
What does this get you?
A fancy timer that records what time your flight was scheduled to take off and what time it actually took off. And if that amount is greater than what is required by law, emails/contacts whatever airline to get you the refund that you’re entitled to!
Surely this is worth $12 million… I’m sure they will make this money back somehow… Not.
What is their marketing strategy?
How are they going to get consumers to learn about this? Spending crazy cash on ADs? To break even on $12 million they would need 600,000 members + they have over 230 employees currently, not cheap. All for a service that people may sign up for, hopefully forget about, see that charge the next year and call and cancel right away.
If they couldn’t scale and get users interested with the first $4.7 million that they raised TWO years ago, what makes them think that ‘if we only had 3 more years’ ‘we could totally convince people to love us if we had 3 more years’.
Not going to happen.
Not to mention this lovely thin/ugly website. This isn’t going to convince people to sign up at all.
Surprise Fees
FYI, check out these reviews from their users that were surprised with the 30 Euro Transfer Fee.
