Originally Posted by
Ianc2003
I have recently fallen foul of a rule that requires a payment of 275 euros per bag to retrieve my two bags from Amsterdam airport, when I wanted to break my flight in ams rather than fly to LHR.
....
Does anyone know if there is a way of recovering this cost, or what other options would be availabile if you want to break your journey on a return section in future?
I recently wrote about a similar experience
here (I wrote the fee as €225, perhaps I got the amount wrong, or perhaps it's since gone up).
In fairness, the KLM website explicitly details the baggage carriage policy
here. You cannot unilaterally have your bags short-checked (otherwise, you should book the ticket that corresponds to the journey you actually want to fly, or that meets the requirements for having bags delivered at intermediate points). And if you do not intend to fly the ticket as flown, and clearly say this to the agent, then that also breaches the conditions of carriage, and the ticket would have to be changed to allow this (and re-priced).
As KLM have clearly specified their policy, I don't think you can now come to any further agreement on the matter given that you have already handed over the cash and the matter is closed as far as they are concerned. I know that some mavericks might suggest that such customer-unfriendly policies could and should be challenged, and you might find a lawyer who will take up the case, but I think you would merely be throwing good money after bad.
The other options: pay to change your ticket. Of course, depending on how flexible your ticket is, and how soon in advance of departure you do this, this can work out to be very expensive. However, if you think you may end up needing to change a flight, then perhaps it's worthwhile paying extra for a certain degree of flexibility in the ticket.
In your case, seeing as you presumably had an inflexible economy ticket, I would have flown the ticket as booked, and bought an extra ticket from London to Geneva (it appears you paid separately for an extra ticket from Amsterdam to Geneva, anyway). The cost difference in the extra ticket wouldn't have been much, and you'd have avoided the €550 penalty.