I'm not mad. I'm not sad. But my mind is constantly running through the contents of my lost baggage. I know, shit happens. And it happened last night to my luggage.
I scanned my tag at the baggage carousel and it said my bag was on the way... But the conveyor stopped. I scanned it again and it said my bag was waiting for me at carousel 3. Well, I was standing next to carousel 3. My bag isn't some uniform black bag, it is a pretty distinct gunmetal grey soft plastic four wheel spinner.
I still wasn't mad. I still wasn't sad. The staff was wonderful even walking us to the back room to check to see if it had slipped through the system. But it wasn't there. So we left the airport with our case number and the hope that the bag would magically appear at the hotel. It is now 5pm on Friday and nothing has magically appeared, and nothing has shown up on the tracking web site.
I was sad though... By the time we got out of the airport In-N-Out Burger has just closed for the night.
UPDATE: SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 2013
Looks like I have to start making a list of contents that were in the bag. United has basically said that they think it was stolen. We stopped by the airport last night to do another search but it was fruitless. The baggage lady was amazingly nice and very sympathetic. She advised us to go to the Airport Police to file with them since they are the only ones that can look at the video of the carousel. Again, the LAPD was extremely friendly and we filed a report for the lost baggage.
So it looks like someone out there may be using my new Sonicare toothbrush. I hope it chips his or her tooth. We won't find out until we are home if something turns up and we'll be opening a claim with United to get a portion of the money back. We think I can get back a maximum of about $1,700 because it is international. (It is a lot higher if you are flying US domestic). That should cover my bag, a belt, and most of the clothing. I have to start digging up receipts to try to put a value to all my stuff.
So what did we learn? We learned how to file a claim. We learned that United staff are all pretty friendly if you aren't an asshole to them. We learned that only 1% of bags are actually stolen (so we can officially say we are in the 1%). We learned that if we are connecting more than once, maybe we should look at going carry on. Although a lot of this could have fallen on our shoulders because we are the ones that proactively switched our flights. If we had just taken the flights that we were scheduled for, it probably would have all worked out.
This article is in the category: Travel.
