Exactly that. Thanks for everyone to get the point. I guess anyone having read my comments here and in other topics about China knows that the last thing I am is a China-basher, but I'm somehow who will point with the finger at things that are just plain wrong..

I'm back from the trip now, so a few things I might have missed out due to having no proper keyboard while being there:

Apparently you had to "preregister online", at least that's what they try to tell us while we were "discussing" with them there. I've just done a research now, couldn't find ANY information about this. Seems like the personal there had absolutely no clue. Furthermore, apparently, one other fellow passengers who was on the same TG-flight (we arrived with TG from BKK, departing SQ to SIN) did in fact NOT got the 72 hours visa on arrival - he seemed to be less interested in "fighting" for it, and eventually agreed to be taken to an airport hotel (landside) for the night, instead of his planned accommodation (He was US citizen, but looked like a Thai origin, spoke US-English, we talked some words with him but not much) in the city, as the weather was bad anyway. He said he just had an overnighter anyway, he also knew about the 72 hours visa and was not happy at all the way it went, but he flew in Economy and had a next-day flight to the US in economy ahead of him, so that probably explains why he just wanted to crash down and sleep, no matter where. Don't know how it ended up, but he was still airside when we finally got the "green light" to pass immigration.

Another thing I mentioned above was that we know now why the luggage could not have been delivered. Apparently, they now (?) have a rule that you're only allowed to bring 5kg of milk powder per person into China. As it was exactly this luggage holding the 16kg of milk powder for our friends daughter, they couldn't deliver it to us. So far, so fair, as I should have remembered that rule. However, the "missing luggage staff" spoke so bad English, the form was also not mentioning it, and we didn't know about the rule anyway - last year, I took 40kg of milk pulver to Shanghai (just myself), showed up at the Red Channel with it, and didn't had to pay anything..

Anyway, when showing up at the airport to pick it up, we had to go "reverse" through customs. As that luggage had the baggage tag of my +1, they first didn't want to let me through as well. Eventually we figured out we had to pay 120 RMB (20 RMB per kg "over allowance") which wasn't a big deal at all, the highway tool was higher than that alone - but it wasn't nice all in all, and took forever.

At least on departure, the airline staff did the opposite - friendly checkin who managed to check through 4 destinations over a time period of 3 days, managing to add our FFP# into the ticket (LX can't/don't want to do this for mileage tickets), a way-better-than-expected airport lounge (Southern's "flagship" apparently) so not everything at the airport is really bad. Just immigration really, really should not "show off" with their 72 hours TWOV program online and LITERALLY at every advertisement board at and around the airport (I'm serious about it. Even when coming back to the airport, you've huge "Guangzhou now allows 72 hours visa free" advertisement all along the airport highway..)

It's just kind of a joke if you passed by at least 20 boards, 10 columns wrapped in advertisement and 5 huge stickers on the floor just to be treated like this 100m later in front of immigration.