Undelivered luggage - UA cannot deliver to a foreign address?
My luggage mis-connected on a FRA-DEN-MRY past Friday, where the luggage made it to MRY but I never did (delay coming into DEN, alternative routing to MRY would have made me miss the reason of my trip). UA re-ticketed me straight to my next destination, IAH, where I was going to go after MRY anway. But my luggage was still sent to MRY, where it now sits since Saturday morning. I filed a claim with UA in IAH, for delivery to my hotel in IAH. All good so far.
Now the problem starts: the luggage still sits in MRY (don't ask me why...), and I am leaving the country, to first go to MEX for less than 24 hours and then back to Europe. So I called UA baggage tracing to update the delivery address to my permanent residence in Europe. They say they cannot do it and that they will simply store my luggage in IAH. Reason: this is a "domestic claim" and cannot be changed. And this despite the domestic UA flights being part of one and the same booking as my flight going back to Europe.
Of course explaining to them that it's pointless to send and then hold lugggage in Houston when I am on a different continent is fruitless. They still insist (no comments on the level of absence of common sense, which comes in conjunction with "a supervisor can call you back in 24 hours" - basically when I am gone and it's too late to find a solution, 30 minute wait times on the phone, etc...).
Any ideas? If I go to IAH airport today, can I go to baggage claims and file a new report there, with delivery of my lost luggage in Europe? I don't care when it gets there, I just don't want it to be stuck in Houston when I have already left the continent. And I don't fancy the idea of making a trip to Houston just to collect a lost luggage only because the idi***s in MRY don't manage since two days to put my bag on a flight to where I am.