I didn't actually notice the damage until I checked into my hotel at LHR. I don't sleep on planes, so after a 9.5hr overnight flight, with about an hour of sleep total, I wasn't paying much attention until I got to my room. As I was flying out of T5 the next day on BA, I didn't want to go to the airport an extra hour early just so I could go to T3, file a report and then go back to T5. The glass of scotch I got to enjoy with breakfast in the BA F lounge was worth almost as much as the bag
.
As for not using aa.com on my phone, I'd have done just that, or found a coffee shop with wifi if I'd known that the 7 day mark was the special cutoff (had no idea and wasn't particularly focused on it). I just figured since my request was for such minor compensation, and I had pictures if they wanted them, they'd probably say sorry, throw me a few miles and be done with it (as they've done over even lesser issues in the past).