The baggage stuff is a real nightmare! My brother once had his bag tagged with someone else's name on AA and then we needed to get them to forward the bag internationally...by some miracle it worked.

I have to say though, UA baggage staff is terrible. I once got a UA agent to give me the local baggage number, but then she said, "Well, we never answer the phone anyway...it's always some Indian with accent I can't understand." No one knows where anything is because the people that can physically look at the bags don't communicate with the Indian-based staff that talk to the passengers. Yikes! Now i have to resist sharing all my baggage-based disasters.