For the first time this century, I decided to check a couple of bags. Oh boy, big mistake.
I arrived at CPH early yesterday morning, but neither bag did. The agent at the SK Service Desk told me the bags had been left behind at ORD. How this could have happened is beyond me, as both bags were correctly labeled, had priority tags, I was flying in First, and the layover at ORD was two hours.
The routing was LAS-ORD-FRA-CPH, and the agent told me the bags had been sent ORD-FRA with LH, and would arrive at CPH at 2 p.m. I could not wait, as I had booked a taxi to take me home to Sweden (which I had only done because of the heavy bags and train services were disrupted, which would have required changing from train to bus to train again). I explained to the agent that I was flying again on Wednesday, and that it was therefore imperative that the bags should be delivered no later than Tuesday. She said the bags would be sent CPH-ARN-RNB and would be delivered today, Monday.
I tried to keep a tab on things via WorldTracerWeb, which unfortunately never got beyond the "received at airport stage". So I decided to give 'm a call. Well, SAS Baggage Service CPH does not answer the phone. Never. Nor do they return calls, even though you are encouraged to enter you number, and are ensured that you will not lose you place in line. Must be a very long line.
Tried SK at RNB instead. A live human being answered the phone. Very friendly and helpful, but until the bags had arrived at RNB there was nothing he could do.
Next I gave Customer Care in Sweden a call. First agent suggested I call Baggage Service in Oslo, he claimed they were better at customer service. Guess what? They don't answer the phone either! Next agent was most unhelpful, said there was nothing he could do, that lost bags were not Customer Care's responsibility, that he could not ask Baggage Service to call me, and that I could not speak to a supervisor, even though he admitted he had one. Third agent gave me a different number to Baggage Service at Kastrup. Turned out to be the lost property number. Fourth agent was actually friendly and empathetic, but explained that there was no way she could help. She claimed that as they were an outsourced service, they were not able to contact Baggage Service themselves, or anyone else at SAS for that matter. She did not have access to any other phone numbers than the public ones, nor any other way of communicating with any SAS employee anywhere. Hard to believe, but what could I say? She did give me the phone number to Baggage Service at Arlanda. They didn't answer the phone either, of course, but at least provided an e-mail address (for those of you with baggage issues:
[email protected])
They apparently do read e-mails at Arlanda, because I suddenly got a call from Kastrup. Agent told me the bags had been sent to Malmö, and that they would be delivered by PostNord Logistics. For anybody who has had to deal with the Swedish postal service that's bad news, so I called them straight away. Oh no, they do not deliver anything that weighs over 20kg, such items must be picked up from a distribution center. I was not surprised to hear that, but what did surprise me was that I would first have to wait for a delivery notification to arrive by snail mail (!!!), which notification I would have to produce to claim the bags. That would add at least another two days.
I fired off another email to ARN, and CPH actually called me again. This agent said the bags had not yet left CPH (they had thus had them in their possession for over 24 hours, despite promising delivery within that timeframe), but would be sent over to Sweden this evening. She also claimed that their contract with the shipping agent commits them to next-day delivery. Didn't sound like PostNord (yes, that is written as one word) to me. She would not provide me with the shipping agent's contact details, but promised to phone them herself, and ask them to phone me Tuesday morning. I await their call with bated breath.
A short time later, I got a call from SK RNB. Another gentleman, just as helpful and friendly. When I told him the bags were due to be shipped by road, he expressed utter amazement. CPH-ARN-RNB is the normal routing for lost bags, from RNB they are then delivered by Jetpak the same day. Why they would be shipped by road from CPH was entirely beyond his comprehesion, but there was of course nothing he could do.
So there we are. Bags which theoretically could have been delivered to me Sunday evening may or may not have left CPH this evening, and may just possibly be delivered tommorow. Once again, I'm not holding my breath.
Yes, I know that the last segment was on LH, which makes them technically responsible for the missing bags. But it is SK that I have to deal with here, and it has been a real struggle. Baggage Service Desks in three countries that simply don't answer the phone is just beyond the pale.
There, just had to get that off my chest!
Johan