Bumped off flight (VDB), need advice
 

We were due to fly phl-man tonight but it was oversold. We were given compo vouchers, hotel,meals and tickets for the flight tomorrow night.
A few questions if I may. We are at the Clarion airport and only have tee shirts as outer clothing, our bags weren’t unloaded with us!
We are gonna need something more substantial because the flight isn’t until 9pm tomorrow. Can we claim the cost of a taxi into philly and to get a sweater and underwear each? There is nothing around here unless we go back to the airport. Also because the flight isn’t until late tomorrow can we claim for a couple of meals, they only gave us $14 total for breakfast in the morning.
With the vouchers, do the flights have to be TAKEN within a year or BOOKED within a year, the voucher isn’t clear on this.

Do you have travel insurance? Probably easier to claim that way.

I don't think AA will reimburse you but it's certainly worth a try anyway. Just write up a short and succinct explanation and submit it via their claim form.

It is my experience that they won't reimburse after the fact. For the food situation, I would recommend going to the customer service counter in the morning to try and get lunch and dinner vouchers. Also take the opportunity to make sure you have confirmed seats on the next flight and aren't standby.

I've read on FT that Twitter can be a useful tool for getting quicker customer service reactions these days, too. Perhaps a tweet about the bumping and lack of clothes might spur them?

OP doesn't make it clear whether this is IDB or VDB. That would absolutely matter with many (most, if not all?) travel insurance policies and would also likely influence the decision of AA Customer Relations.

Sounds like you were VOL denied for compensation, but if not OP, AA owes you and whoever else was invol'd a nice big check per the DOT.

As per getting reimbursed for clothing, I would see if able make a claim at the PHL baggage office for delayed bags since they really should have been pulled being it was an international flight. File a claim for the bags for the sole purpose of asking for reimbursement for necessary expenditures like clothing, toiletries etc, that way there is a paper trail showing your bags were not returned to you like they should have been.

As for food vouchers, I would ask at PHL in morning or afternoon for some food vouchers to cover since your VOL denied boarding leads to such a long delay before able to leave, AA should easily be able to give you lunch and dinner vouchers, not so sure they will reimburse you for food you spend, but it's worth a shot if you want to take the risk or they refuse to give you more food vouchers.

Thanks for the replies. Yes it was voluntary offload but of course we thought our bags would have been offloaded as well. I have travel insurance but as we VOL they won’t pay out. I’m not too bothered about the sweater, the weather is going to be ok here today but we would need some essentials. I will take a trip over to phl this morning and speak to CS.
I am quite shocked that our bags were left on, there were 5 of us in total and combined there were 8 bags that traveled on that plane with no owners. Kinda makes a mockery of the security we have to go through to get airside.

For future reference, sounds like it would have been useful to have an extra set of clothes in a carryon. Or, insist, at the time of the conversation with the GA, on having your bags offloaded and returned to you. I had a similar thing at DFW one year with IRROPS to EZE and had to overnight at DFW. My bags showed up, finally, at the baggage claim area.

Surely if you accepted VOL, they gave you a sum in vouchers as compensation?

Travel vouchers, not going to buy me essentials

Your hotel probably has a free airport shuttle to/from the PHL airport. From the airport there's a very convenient light rail connection (with a stop at just about every concourse, but it's best to get on at the beginning of the line so that you're not waiting for board) to downtown Philadelphia which IIRC costs about $8 one way versus probably $40-50 for one way taxi fare. The current schedule probably operates about every half hour on Saturdays. If you get off at either 15th Street/Suburban Station of about 9th Street Market East, both underground, you'll find clothing stores around you, for example I think there's a Macy's in the Market East Mall on top of the train station. You'll also be close to a great indoor restored historic market with interesting possibilities for lunch.

We were told to go to baggage claim to collect our bags only to be told that they weren’t offloaded

ahh yes Reading Terminal Market, great place. Yes we are going back into Philly today anyway, we stayed at Loews last week.
Lyft was $17 so it’s just as cheap to do that as take the train. Thanks for the input, very much appreciated.

A few years ago we were on a flight from Hawaii to LAX. The flight was delayed overnight, so they either rebooked people or sent them to a hotel overnight with hotel and meal vouchers.

Fortunately, this was all before check-in, so we had all our luggage.

After we returned, I sent a polite note to the airline telling them we had a few additional expenses, such as another day parking and kennel for our dogs. They sent us back a $200 voucher for future travel. I was happy with that.

When you are negotiating the VDB is really the best time to get the additional food vouchers, etc. Certainly as has been noted, it doesn't hurt to send in receipts and ask for some reimbursement.

Your bag goes through the same security whether you travel with it or not. In the US there isn't positive bag matching on domestic flights. I'm guessing based on your situation that because this was a last minute thing and you didn't know your bag would be travelling without you, that it's ok to separate the passenger from their bag even on an international flight. And you didn't know they were going to do that until you got down to baggage claim.

If you're going to use Uber for a shopping expedition, depending on your preferences and price point, you might want to consider some stores located on City Line Avenue, IIRC including Saks and a second similar place. Alternatively, farther away, there's the huge suburban King of Prussia mall which IIRC was one of the first indoor shopping malls.

I think Philadephia's huge iconic local downtown department store (Wanamaker's) at about 13th and Juniper (very close to Market and Chestnut Streets, but probably a more interesting walk from Suburban Station/15th Street) closed a while back.