Vueling and damaging personal property, not luggage

joenixon1986

Hi,

I had a flight from FCO-LGW on September and have been trying to raise a claim for damage to a personal item. I'm hitting a brick wall with nowhere to go and no further help.

Background:
When boarding the plane, I was asked to put luggage in the hold. A sticker was attached to my passport cover with a VYxxxxx code attached to it. I had my flight fine, got home and a few days later noticed the sticker still on my cover. I attempted to remove the sticker and it has removed the finish on my passport cover.

I called Vueling about 10 times to try and speak to various different departments, and was eventually told if I didn't report it in the airport to get a PIR number the telephone number couldn't help. They recommend emailing and also reporting online.

I went online and reported and was told my claim for damaged luggage was not acceptable because it is cosmetic damage and I did not report in the airport. I have since responded several times asking how to make a formal complaint, both to the email and on social media, and am told to email, and when I do I'm told a final decision has been made on my emails.

I am not able to talk to anyone who is not following a script from a call centre.

I even tried to guess the head of customer experience email address and emailed directly, but have not received a reply.




I don't understand how Vueling can damage my property by attaching a sticker which is not re-peelable, and expect there to be no damage. Note, I have handed my passport in the cover over to be scanned in. At no point was I asked if it was ok to affix the sticker or if I would give my permission to.


Does anyone have any advice on how I raise this with someone at Vueling to get them to replace a cover from damage as a consequence of direct interaction with Vueling staff. I'm so unhappy that Vueling simply block you from discussing with any kind of manager, and have absolutely no room for exceptions.

As you can probably tell from the above frustrated brain dump, I'm very disappointed and angry that Vueling simply don't care that they damaged my cover.

I looked at the possibility of small claims, but they do not appear to have a registered UK office, so think that rules this out.

Worst thing is the flight, plane and staff were good apart from the after service which is non-existent. I cannot recommend people avoid Vueling all opportunities, in case you have any problems. My experience is that they do not care about customers at all.

Hope someone can advise me on how to progress this, as it's not fair at all.

Happy to provide as much info as possible to assist with giving you the full picture.

Thank you
Joe

Manxman_in_exile

Is the "damage" to the passport cover so bad that the passport is no longer deemed to be valid? If it is still considered to be valid and you've not had to go to the expense of replacing it, it's difficult to see what loss you have suffered that you can claim for. I'm assuming it's just some adhesive residue with perhaps a partial layer of paper from the sticker?

joenixon1986

Thanks for the reply - sorry should have said.

It’s a leather cover to protect my passport which has been damaged. There is residue and the finish on the cover has been damaged.

My thoughts are if a non-repeelable sticker is attached to a luxury leather good, it’s not unreasonable to think it could damage it and that it would be better to attach it differently to the passport itself and not the leather cover.

Passport is fine but the slip on protective leather cover is not.

powerful_Rogue

Sounds like the 'protective cover' has served its purpose!

These stickers are designed to go direct onto the passport and peel straight off. These passport covers are nothing but a nuisance, trust me!

Fosterdog

But the protective cover is there to protect the passport, if the sticker was stuck on the passport itself then the cover would not be able to protect it, plus the sticker stuck on the passport itself could invalidate it. Isn't the whole point of the cover that it gets damaged instead of the passport?

Maybe if you had removed the sticker right after the flight instead of waiting a few days then it may have peeled off without causing damage, even easy peel stickers have a point at which they will no longer peel off.

lincroft1710

Unless we are talking about damage to the actual passport, I would just forget it. It is abundantly clear the airline aren't interested

davidmcn

Fosterdog wrote: »

the sticker stuck on the passport itself could invalidate it.

Really? I thought it was pretty commonplace for passports to have bits of old labels still attached to the outside, not sure why anybody would view that as invalidating them.

joenixon1986

powerful_Rogue wrote: »

Sounds like the 'protective cover' has served its purpose!

These stickers are designed to go direct onto the passport and peel straight off. These passport covers are nothing but a nuisance, trust me!

My point exactly, designed to put on a passport, yet the staff member didn’t attach to a passport and predictable damage has resulted.

joenixon1986

Fosterdog wrote: »

But the protective cover is there to protect the passport, if the sticker was stuck on the passport itself then the cover would not be able to protect it, plus the sticker stuck on the passport itself could invalidate it. Isn't the whole point of the cover that it gets damaged instead of the passport?

Maybe if you had removed the sticker right after the flight instead of waiting a few days then it may have peeled off without causing damage, even easy peel stickers have a point at which they will no longer peel off.

In all my time flying has an airline put a sticker on my passport cover. It always goes on the passport, which is taken out of the cover for inspection.

joenixon1986

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Unless we are talking about damage to the actual passport, I would just forget it. It is abundantly clear the airline aren't interested

Exactly why I asked for help on how to raise this, as it’s plain wrong. I’ll take your items, do things to them which if for a second I thought logically about it could damage them. Then I will ignore your request for replacement because I damaged your stuff.

joenixon1986

Fosterdog wrote: »

But the protective cover is there to protect the passport, if the sticker was stuck on the passport itself then the cover would not be able to protect it, plus the sticker stuck on the passport itself could invalidate it. Isn't the whole point of the cover that it gets damaged instead of the passport?

Maybe if you had removed the sticker right after the flight instead of waiting a few days then it may have peeled off without causing damage, even easy peel stickers have a point at which they will no longer peel off.

By couple of days I mean day after, late night flight, get home 2am, sort our passport the next day. It’s hardly like it was left weeks, and again if there was a need to immediately remove due to risk of damage, a warning should be provided or another sticker used as it’s reasonable using that sticker would cause damage.