I'm semi-venting. Sorry if this gets long.

My folks flew LHR-ORD-PDX last weekend. One of their checked bags was very badly damaged on the LHR-ORD segment. It was a cheap, well-traveled hard sided case and it literally had chunks missing from one side, and huge cracks in top and bottom like it had been dropped from one heck of a height. They got the whole thing wrapped in tape and the case made it to PDX.

The baggage office at PDX was a dreadful experience. After a long wait, three conversations and a final snotty comment about the "cheap plastic case", they offered $100 credit towards the purchase of a new case. Today I drove into their "authorized" retailer in downtown Portland. $100 would have probably bought half of the smallest tote bag in the store. The "$100 credit" turned out to be dependent on the store's appraisal of the value of the damaged bag, which we hadn't taken because we'd been told that there was just a flat dollar credit being made available. The proprietor clearly thought we were idiots - he simply did not comprehend that we were in his store but not willing to pay $600+ for a quality piece of luggage.

I went elsewhere and bought my stepdad a serviceable bag to get them home, but it is preposterous to me that United doesn't have a simple way to replace a cheap bag with a cheap bag. Interestingly in the boilerplate text on the damage/claim form it states, "Without a receipt, the maximum for any one item will be $100." I guess I will do a better job of hanging onto my receipts in the future!