Ugh. I've just had my experience with the UAL lost & found rabbit hole over the past week.
11 days ago my wife and I were flying back from Belize for an anniversary trip, connecting through Houston. So the flight was BZE-IAH, and then IAH-LAX. Of course, the flight was late leaving BZE, so we got to IAH with a little more than an hour to clear customs, grab our suitcases and re-check them, get through security, and then get to another terminal (I think we landed in E, and had to get to C). So I was stressed. In my haste, I left my iPad in the seatback pocket. I realized this while at the security checkpoint (when I reached into my bag to get it out). We ran down to the baggage claim (the TSA agent was awesome here - she let us get out of line, run downstairs, and then run back straight to front of the line) office, but they couldn't do anything but take down our name/number.
We barely made our connecting flight to LAX, which was also delayed leaving. While onboard, I filled out the lost item report from my iPhone, and used the Find My iPhone app to alert me when the iPad accessed the internet (no, unfortunately, the iPad was not locked. It doesn't normally leave the house except for this trip...). And then on a lark, I told a FA my sob story. He took pity on me and took me up to the captain, who took my info down, and said he would make a few calls while they were waiting.
Our plane eventually took off, and about an hour in, the FA came back to my seat and handed me a print-out dispatch stating the following: IPAD WAS FOUND IN SEAT 32D ON PREVIOUS FLIGHT. MR [SWANSON] WILL NEED TO GO TO BAGGAGE CLAIM AND FILL OUT THE FORM. AGENT THERE WILL ASSIST WITH FORWARDING THE IPAD TO HIM.
Hurray! I thought. I had been seriously beating myself up before this (I really hate doing stupid things), and somehow it seemed like it was going to all work out. Silly me.
After arriving at LAX, we went straight to the baggage claim office after getting our luggage. Of course, the person working the desk looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language when I told her what happened. I even showed her the printout and asked her if she could just call someone on the ground at IAH. She basically gave me the number for the "Baggage Resolution Center", told me to fill out a lost item report (even though I already had, and even though the item wasn't even lost anymore) and shoved me out the door.
So I called the BRC hotline number, which gives you the robo-instruction to go to United.com and fill out a report. So I called back and just hit "0" until I got a real person on the phone. He explained the warehouse procedure and that I would need to wait until it got "into the system". My big fear, of course, is that it wouldn't "get into the system" in the first place because it had probably been set aside waiting for me to call, and now I couldn't get anyone at United to let me talk to a person actually in Houston. I was told that "everything" gets into the system, and just call back tomorrow.
When I called the next day, the BRC hotline number sent me to a call center in India, and I was told that "the system was updating" and to "please be patient" and call back in an hour or two. So I did that, and got the same message, and did it again, rinse, repeat.
When the fourth person started to give me the same spiel, I firmly asked to speak to a manager. They were resistant, but finally gave in. The manager was magically able to get the system to stop "updating", but after searching through the logs found nothing fitting the description of my iPad. He said to call back tomorrow, and that maybe it hadn't been processed yet from the airport. When I asked him if I could speak with someone actually in Houston, and better yet, at the airport, he said that they were not allowed to give that number out.
The next day I repeated the process yet again. This time, after my second or third call, I was able to convince the call center guy from India to give me number for the airport baggage claim, or so I thought. What he gave me was the number to the general airport lost and found, but I was able to use that info to social engineer (i.e. sweet talk) the direct line to the United baggage desk. But that was another dead end, as even though the person at the United desk was very helpful, she went through the inventory they had (which included many, many iPads, laptops, etc.) and nothing matched the description of what I had. (It was in both a folio case as well as a zippered sleeve).
After several more variations of this conversation, with both the Baggage Resolution hotline as well as the airport baggage claim desk, I was told that the warehouse has a 1-2 month backlog, and it could take that long for them to locate my iPad and match it up with the lost item report.
And that, of course, is assuming that it actually made its way into the system, as I have my doubts. Last week I noticed that my Netflix queue showed two movies as having been partially watched. I asked my son if he had watched them, and he said no, and so did my daughter. I can only assume that they were watched on the iPad. I have since changed the password to that account as well as my FB, Twitter, and Gmail account that can be read from that device. Since I did that and sent the lock request, nothing new has been watched.