Originally Posted by
GRUflyer
Dear UA fliers,
Has anyone ever been through this situation?
I arrived in GRU last week only to learn that my bags had all be left in ORD. The lazy dragon working on bagagge claim in GRU fills in a delayed bag form for me and tells me to wait until the following day and not bother them by calling to check - they would get to me whenever my bags showed up.
To add agony to the misery, he then proceded to saying that I should not be complaining much because I was flying stand by - I was not! And I was flying F for the matter!
Anyway, my bags arrived one day later... but gues what? They had stolen some expensive items from it! I called UA in Brazil and two extremely kind and helpful agents helped me fill in the forms and attach the receipts so UA could pay me back.
They told me everything looked OK and they would probably get back to me in 15 days to pay me back.
Does anyone know how easily that actually happens?
And FWIW, I am more and more and more (have I mentioned MORE?) inclined to switching off to LH/LX altogether. Being Sao Paulo based and flying primilarly to Asia, it does not really matter that much....
The employees at GRU are not United’s employees. Rather, they work for Infraero, a company that supplies workers for most of the airlines at GRU (and elsewhere in Brazil). I suspect that you are not going to get United to acknowledge culpability as there was no United employee at GRU. As one person already noted, you cannot prove where the theft occurred (Brazil or somewhere along the route of your trip).
A little more than one year ago I checked a bag at GRU. When I retrieved the bag in Los Angeles, the bag was a mess inside and it was obvious from the outside of the bag that it had been tampered with (the TSA lock was missing).
Nothing was stolen except the TSA approved lock had been cut off and placed back in my bag. The contents of my bag were rifled and thrown back into the bag after it had been opened.
Some of my clothing got soiled because the jerk that ransacked my bag also opened a box of throat lozenges that leaked over the contents of my back. Each individual lozenge was removed from its aluminum foil and placed back in my bag. Each lozenge liquified during transit.
I complained to United and got an education relative to checking a bag. The most important lesson I learned from the experience was to never again check a bag.
By the way, you might get coverage for some or all of the stolen items from your insurance carrier or the credit card company where you charged your flight ticket.
Please report back to let us know the out come of your claim.