Hi AC experts,

I have an issue I need to pick the brain of FTers on.

Have AC now adopted the stance that they will not be responsible for damaged luggage?

My platinum 3 TravelPro is 2 years old but still works great. Considering I went through 2 bags in 2004, this shows the quality

Back on Apr 1, When I got rerouted due to delay in an inbound flight and impossible connection, I was surprised when I arrived without my checked luggage. When AC ground handler in LAS mistakenly loaded my luggage to YYC rather than YYZ My flight arrived mid afternoon but was not delivered till 7pm. I was not a happy camper since I was flying to the US on another airline 6am next morning so just quickly unpacked, did laundry and repacked.

When the taxi dropped me off at YOW, I realized that the handle on my TravelPro is not working properly and is jamming frequently. Somewhere in the 24 hours where my luaggage and I parted and AC lost my bag, they also managed to damage the bag. Talked to an gate agent and she say to call luaggage in India so spent 1 hour getting numbers and calling regular luggage line and then tranfer to Elite luggage line. They said I have 7 days to file a report in YOW only but I am about to leave for 1.5 week business trip. They added a note to my file that I can report something up to 2 weeks.

When I reported it in YOW, the gentleman behind the counter did not want to find the orignial record and since I checked the bag this time too due to weight, he just filed it to that trip's damage report. He was saying AC may not be responsible for repairs and that they do not authroize repairs anymore locally but send it to someone in Montreal who is cheap. Not a great recommendation in my opinion.

Since I was about to leave for another trip and was not sure if my TravelPro would cover that under the 10 year warranty, I decided to bring it to Specialty luggage store where I bought it that also do repairs and assessment. The repair person was not in the Sat of Easter weekend so I had to leave it until trip home last weekend. The luggage place said it is damaged and the handle need to be replaced. Since it is clearly airline damage, it is not covered under warranty and the cost is $60+ tax. They guy is knowledgeable and seemed trustworthy and considering a new TravelPro Platinum 4 is $315+tax which is higher than the $300 I paid for the TravelPro Platinum 3, the repair is still worthwhile.

It needs to be a TravelPro authorized repair and shipping the bag to YUL and back would cost a bit of money I would think and frankly I am travelling so frequently, I cannot rely on AC and the unknown repair place to get it back to me in time in good condition and my back up rollaboard sucks. I ended up biting the bullet and started the repairs.

Do you think AC would be responsible for the cost of the luggage repairs? It is not a lot of money but it is the principle of the thing since AC damaged my bag. And the TravelPro is not a cheap, flimsy, easily damagable piece and the repair guy said that someone had to jammed down the handle pretty hard to damage it like that. The Platinum has a slightly different handle system and I think someone did not know it and did not take the minute to find out and just used brute force on it...