This week, I am in Houston on a business trip. The nice thing about traveling with work is that I get to fly business class. You would expect that by paying thousands of pounds for a ticket that you would be taken care of and your baggage given priority right? Wrong!
Long-term readers of this blow will have read my previous post detailing how I beat United customer service whilst traveling Economy. Essentially a couple of disastrous delays resulted in us arriving back in the UK 36 hours late – My persistent complaints resulted in a $500 gift certificate which we used against a later flight.
Where are My Bags?
Where are my bags? Good question! They didn’t arrive with me on Sunday afternoon despite the bright orange priority sticker and I haven’t seen them since checking in! Unfortunately United were unable to track them until this morning (Tuesday) and still don’t fully understand the journey they took. I have a strong suspicion that they reached the US, got sent back to the UK and then back to the US again. There was some confusion around ‘Home’ address and ‘Hotel’ address.
What Compensation do I get?
If it was up to United, then I would have a temporary toothbrush kit and an apology. Of course, that is simply not good enough! Upon arriving in Houston I made my way to the lost baggage department and insisted that I use their phone to call baggage management. It is very important that you get authorization to purchase clothes if you plan to claim the expenses back at a later date. Their immediate going in position was $50. Now I don’t know how fifty bucks can kit you out for a full day of business meetings, but that wasn’t good enough. I pushed the issue and managed to get pre-approval to spend $150. Unfortunately the only store that was open on a Sunday night was.. Walmart.
Now when my bags didn’t turn up on Monday, it was time for another phone call. This time I was seriously unhappy and used lots of fancy adjectives to describe how I felt. The assistant seemed much more willing to assist me and upped my limit to $350.
While this situation is far from idea, I am looking on the positive side that I have $350 to spend on new clothes 🙂 Part of me hopes my bags don’t make it here today so I can call back a third time!
How is your week going?
I really hope they find your bag, otherwise the compensation per kilo they offer is pretty pathetic.
Delivered on Tues 🙂
That sounds dreadful.
With airlines, I’ve found it better to negotiate for stuff rather than cash. Gate attendants may have very little space to give you $500 for being upset, but they could very easily give you $500 worth of flight vouchers, hotel accommodations, meal vouchers, drink tickets, and so forth.
If it was a personal trip I would be doing that… Given that my company paid for the flight, I would have to declare and give up any compensation in this form
Wow, good luck with your bags! Unfortunately, that happens to me often and its always annoying. My week is quiet, not that exciting!
Delta lost our bags when we went to NYC, and we kicked up a big stink. They gave us a $50 credit to another Delta flight because they cancelled ours and then lost our bags, as if we’d ever go on Delta again. I hope you get your luggage!
OUCH man that sucks!! I got a few hundred bucks interim clothes… that’s about it!
Sounds terrible! I remember arriving in Boston and our room at the Omni was not ready, we waited 45 minutes before checking the status of our room. Long story short we waited 2 hours before we eventually got to our room. I asked for a complementary breakfast for the 4 of us while we waited and got it. When we were finished with breakfast the room was still not ready, I insisted on an upgraded room which we received plus $100 off our stay. Had I not asked I’m sure I would have paid more for the visit.
Wow – sounds like you’ve got some good negotiating skills. That sucks that your bags were lost, but it sounds like you were able to make up for it. $350 vs. $50 is pretty good tradeoff.