Lost bag of AF - advice sought :)
 

This is a bad week for lost things for me haha.

AF seem to have misplaced my son’s case between CDG and BHX. Have reported it and got the report references etc.

I will need to go shopping to replace things. I would very much appreciate any words of wisdom people might have on this :).

What will AF pay for? How is the process?

Thanks :)

They will pay for reasonably priced necessities, such as clothing, toiletry, etc....assuming this is your outbound trip. If you're returning home, harder to argue as you'd have these items.

Keep all tickets from the cashier and then submit online. Never had an issue obtaining a quick refund.

Good info! Thanks

This is an outbound of a circular trip - we travel on open jaw and single tickets - cannot even remember the last return I got - for this particular leg it was the final leg, although I have lots of other flights AF can see in our names.

Is there a particular amount I should keep under?

Did you file a claim for the luggage?

Within 3 days they try to locate it and you can buy reasonable amount of first necessity items (try spend less than $100 a day) and you can already submit a claim for the refund of these expenses after 3 days

after 3 days if there is still no news about the luggage they will you ask to further describe the luggage and its content and then you need to wait 21 days starting from the day you first opened the claim (the day on which you declared the missing luggage). After 21 days it will be definitely considered lost and you can make a claim for the value of the lost luggage on top of what they already reimbursed for first necessity needs.

Use your adult judgement :) No hard and fixed amount, and also consider living expenses will vary by country.

Don't have to go barebones cheap, but you need to have a good reason if you expense say, a 350 EUR jacket for a dinner.

I haven't ever had an issue expensing €400 for a pair of shoes (I'd be hard pressed to find a suit jacket for €350....). AF has paid and never questioned.

Amex/Axa on the other hand....

AF is usually good; unless they are under the impression you are trying to screw them.
I don't know how old is you son, but I once needed to buy a business suit. I did get a cheap one and was reimburse d within a few days.

What's important is that you check the worldtracer status periodically.

The problem is that AF customer care gives the impression of working "à la tête du client". They don't seem to have any real scale for refunds or compensations, unless they are rules like "open bar" refunds for elites and capped refunds for others.

Over the years I reimbursed all kind of "weird" items, never an issue whether it's on the way out or back home, to name a few:
- Sunglasses ~200€ (flying to a sunny destination...)
- A dog jacket ~70€ (on the way back home)
- A shaving machine ~ 70€ (on the way back home)
- Winter jacket ~200€ (on the way back home)

And countless items of toiletries/clothing, probably ~300-400€ in total in some cases.

they were such a pain in the *** with the invoice i sent them when they lost my luggage... like i bought my nintendo switch at the supermarket and it is on the same receipt as my grocery and had the reimbursement declined because food is excluded !

Some agents are really dumb and don't know how to read a receipt. I even had to send an excel sheet with all the items circled on each receipt to make sure they would refund me all the items they lost with the luggage

My experience last year also not good. Lost luggage was returned 5 weeks after they lost it. In the meantime, after the 3 week period, they declared the luggage lost and paid a flat amount of eur 900, but only the excess above the reimbursement for necessities bought while traveling abroad. It was argued as I didn’t have receipts for each item lost, they would only pay the flat amount. Now I photograph my bags’ contents or better yet don’t check anything.

From now on I will keep purchases receipts for all the clothes I’ll buy. I usually only keep receipts of things for which there is a warranty.

My question then is; what do receipts prove? Sure, it proves that at some point in time you have purchased that item..but not that it was in the bag that was lost.

Thankfully I've never had luggage get lost for a longer amount of time. Purchased a few minor things (<100 euro) when my bag was delayed by a day and that was no issue from AF. I can imagine though that if you try to get reimbursed for 200 euro designer sunglasses (Without proof that you had these in your bag...) they will first have a hard look at your track record and overall value to the company.

Lost Bag but know where it is
 

AF lost our bag BOS-CDG-BCN. Had air tag in it and it is currently showing that it is in the AF lost and found building in CDG called Le Kube. Been 6 weeks now and nobody at AF will make an effort to go there and find it. They have pictures of the bag and everything. Amazingly incompetent. First time flying AF and the last for me. To make matters worse, it's impossible to get anyone on the phone that will escalate this issue or show any sense of urgency. And they have not offered any compensation yet whatsoever, saying they need more time to find the bag. No out-of-pocket expenses granted either. Any advice on how to escalate this within AF would be appreciated.