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Know your rights
You will save yourself a lot of money simply by knowing your rights whenever you use a service that does not go quite right. For example, consider a frequent flyer who gets bumped from an overbooked flight. You are entitled to $400 ( used to be just $200 until 2008 ) if your newly booked flight arrives two hours after the original arrival time. If it arrives more than two hours late you are entitled to meal vouchers and hotel if overnight stay is required. Most people do not know this or would not think it may apply to them.
Corporations are both responsible and obligated to provide exactly the service you pay for and expect. When they provide inadequate service for whatever reason, they are required to compensate you for the loss. It makes absolutely no difference if the inconvenience was really not a big deal for you. This is where most customers shoot themselves in the foot. They assume since it is not a big deal for them, it is not a big deal for the company.
It is a big deal for the company to have a flaw in their service, and they are required to offer you compensation that is consistent with their policy, regardless of your personal situation. You are doing the company a service by getting your fair share of compensation. Otherwise there would be no feedback loop for mistakes and shoddy service would go unchecked.
The problem is most company's are operated by a large fleet of customer service representatives ( CSR's ). Most of these CSR's are unaware of the complex rules and regulations of their company policy. As a result they resort to their own gut and intuition instead of the hard facts. They will attempt to triage any complaint by resolving it in the least amount of time and the least amount of stress for them.
So if you present yourself as someone ignorant, then the CSR is not going to waste their time figuring out standard operating procedure when they can just tell you to go away or offer the least complicated compensation. CSR's are not concerned about dishing out company money. What concerns them is managing their stress and avoiding escalating problems that would involve their manager . If the manager gets involved then he would discover the CSR's ignorance in company policy. Therefore the best CSR strategy is to be fully versed in company policy, but the reality is far from that.
The amount of the compensation is typically determined by the monetary loss from the average customer. You can tell what the average customer is like by observing the company's clienteles. The richer the clienteles, the higher the compensation will be . Again, it makes no difference if you are above or below the average. You are entitled to what the company policy states. Since many CSR's do not know the exact company policy, it will greatly benefit you to arm yourself with this knowledge. Go to online forums specific to the service you used and post a question there asking what compensation is appropriate for what happened to you.