Grrrr! BA Lost Baggage

fox2319

Flew to Denmark for the day at the start of July (very bad timing) and ended up missing my flight on the way back (airlines fault - mechanical probs on the connecting flight apparently) and BA lost my bag between Copenhagen and Heathrow.

I'm on hols in scotland at the mo and got a text at 12:30 on thursday saying they wanted to deliver my bag at 2:30 that day. Tried phoning the '0870' number they specified in my notification text but found it impossible to get through to a real person. Ended up getting a call at 2:45 from the courier (at least the timing was accurate) saying he was outside my property with my bag, shame as I was 500 miles away.

Couple of questions
1 - Do these guys honestly expect you to hang around at home for a month and a half waiting for them to say your bag is around? I suppose they've got your bag so it'll be tricky going anywhere
2 - Why don't they make it possible to talk to somebody? It's blimmin annoying!

Still, hopefully my bag will turn up next week when I'm home.

Jeff

Alisson

Wow that's just ridiculous. I've heard of people having to wait a month or more for their luggage, it amazes me. I had to wait a few hours once and thought it was horrid! I'm going to attempt to tell you about Global Bag Tags without sounding like a walking billboard for them. When you're getting ready to leave, hook a small metal global bag tag to your luggage and call or go online to give them your entire itinerary. If anything gets lost along the way, they can get it to your current location OR to your next location. Which is very cool IMHO

So for my first message on a new forum (for me) I hope I didn't just get the boot

lizardbouy

They lost it on Saturday and they have been entirely useless on finding it. I've read so many horror stories this morning that I wanted to share mine. I've also started a blog to try and get other people to share their stories so we can publicise this more as it's awful.

Here's my story (so far) and my blog is at http://balostmybaggage.blogspot.com/ - I'll be keeping it up to date as we go.

On Saturday August 25th I flew back from a months holiday, the last leg of the trip being Tokyo (Narita) to London (Heathrow). The flight landed at 17.30 and we were at baggage claim by 18.00. As usual we expected a short wait but after nearly an hour and half with no baggage my saga began.

You never expect that your luggage will actually get lost. You think it's just slow. This time it wasn't. I approached the "help" desk to get an update on what's happening. The first answer i get is that there are two containers of bags still to come from the airplane, and that they'll arrive in 5 mins. Excellent.

Twenty minutes later, and still no bags I ask again, this time they say that all the bags have now been delivered. So we wait another 15mins. Still no bags.

Third time at the desk now, and still no announcement, and the chap says that there are definitely no more to come and therefore they are lost. "Would we like a form?" - No we would not, we'd like our baggage and some information on what's going on. How about you start be putting an announcement out over the tannoy as there are at least 30 people awaiting bags. "it's broken" he says, but after a few minutes of explaining why it might be a good idea to make an announcement it suddenly works. He won't walk over to the people and tell them either as "I'll get attacked". This is almost amusing...

So well over 2 hours has passed and we now have no choice but to take the "mishandled" baggage form (I love that they don't call it "lost" - just mishandled) and to go home with assurances that "it's just in Heathrow somewhere...you'll get it tomorrow"

Home we go and decide to relax, this must happen all the time and I'm sure they always turn up.

Sunday morning and I check the online service to see where the bags are. This whizzy (not!) website says "TRACING CONTINUES. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER". Great, that's useful. Still its only been 12 hours so we relax. Let's come back to this tomorrow.

Monday morning, 8 AM, no phone call to tell us it's all OK so I call them. On an 0845 number so it costs me money. OK only a local call but I know that these big companies take a cut of the 0845 numbers - This call should be free. They lost my bag and I have to pay to call them? Madness. Anyway someone in a call centre nowhere near Heathrow says there is no new information on the system and that they will message Tokyo as "it's probably there" - Hang on, it was "probably in Heathrow" on Saturday....So she sends them a message, she can't call them as "she's not allowed to make outgoing calls". It'll take 24 hours to get an update so would I mind calling back tomorrow. Well actually I would, I'm starting to get really annoyed now. No-one is proactively doing ANYTHING to find my bag, they're just sending each other emails and hoping it turns up.

Monday afternoon, the website updates (no-one calls me) to say one bag is "ITEM LOCATED, PENDING CONFIRMATION" - Excellent! but the other is still "TRACING CONTINUES. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER". I'm confused as to how they find one but not the other - still I'm sure it'll turn up. Just waiting for my call from BA now to tell me all is well and to arrange delivery.

Tuesday morning, 4th day now, no call about the "found" bag or the "lost bag" so I call them. They have no information, they can't even see that one is found. They do tell me they are both in Japan though and that they'll email Japan again and I should call back in 24 hours. Hmmm, spotting a pattern here. I am really mad now and get the complaints number which is an 0870 number so this is even worse. They will make serious money out of me know for complaining that they have lost my bag - not happy.

I leave it 20mins then call back and get a different operator, I tell her that despite what her colleague says the website says one is found, and they are not in Japan. She checks, and she says "yes, one bag is found and is in London". Funny that 20mins ago it was lost and in Japan but yesterday the website said found. So, when can I expect delivery of this bag. "don't know, maybe in 24/48 hours" and why is the other one still lost? "don't know", but have no fear, she sent a message on her system.

This is now ludicrous. I am SO mad at British Airways. They are doing nothing to actually SEARCH for my bags and find them. They have not called or emailed me ONCE. I am doing all the chasing. The customer services is appalling.

Then to darken my mood further I do a quick google search for "BA LOST BAGGAGE" and immediately regret it. It seems BA is losing more bags than any other airline and that it has to put on extra flights just to ship lost baggage around the World. I also read articles about how if they don't get it back to you in 45 days they auction it off. I am not joking.

Here is the Times Article Lost Luggage Auctions from 19th August 2007

Here is the article about the Special luggage flights, from 6th August.

Here is the website of Greasbys auction house
they use to sell the bags. And the list of the lots at the next auction.

So why did I start this blog? Well two reasons.

1. I want my bag back and maybe if I can get BA and enough other people to read this then maybe someone will do something about it. It's almost impossible to get through to a real person at BA and every time you do you get different information.

2. This affects loads of people and it's just not good enough. So if it's affected you please add a comment or send me an email with your story and I'll add it to the site. The only way to get BA to improve is to publicise how big a problem this is.

I'm on day 4 now....when will my bag arrive?