Today they say my daughter's bag is still at Heathrow and they have given us a new bag tag number with a format of XH######
This tag number results in an error on the tracking site. 13 digit file number still says bag is lost, but several people have said bag is found at Heathrow, for two days now, but no word on when it will get to LAX. Now on 7 days.

I will PM you but the gory details are:

Friday Dec 21- It lost its tag in Heathrow during the transfer. It went to Heathrow's lost bag area. Wednesday night (Dec 26) after being on the phone with AA with many different people they found a bag sitting in Heathrow with contents matching her description. They put in a rush to have it transferred to AA. Thursday morning I called and was told it was on flight 109 to LAX.
Thursday night I called because 109 had landed 5 hours ago and I hadn't heard anything and was told noone could locate it in the sytem but it "should have been on 109" by a very nice lady in Reno. I won't give her name her but this lady was *awesome* she said she would keep looking and call back on Friday.
Friday morning I called and was essentially told they had no idea where it was. I was also told that it was not on 109, and why would anyone have told me that. They start looking in Heathrow again. Nice Reno calls back Friday afternoon. Still looking, can't find it. She is convinced it must be at LAX but LAX is not answering the phone.
My husband got fed up and called the EXP line and read them the riot act. (Daughter has no status)
A few minutes later someone called and said we had this new bag tag number "XH######" but they are still not sure where the bag is.
The Reno lady calls me for the third time to check in and I gave her that bag tag number. She begins typing furiously and after a few minutes says "It is in LA! It was on 109 yesterday but the people in LA did not know whose bag it was because the new bag tag number was not recorded in your daughter's file."
She tried to get it on a van Thursday night, but again, LAX was not answering the phone.
Saturday morning, the guy I talked to who dug around and found it Wednesday night called. He said he'd been off two days and apologized for the confusion. He said it would be delivered Saturday afternoon. We were going to be out in LA (we live in OC) and said we would just pick it up.
Picked it up at LAX, all was intact.

So I guess the lesson is KEEP CALLING. I think it would still be sitting in Heathrow if I hadn't stayed on it. I was told to start filling out the claim form after 5 days, that there was very little hope.

I got in very late (almost midnight) on 12/29, got bag off carousel, put it in trunk, got home and discovered the front pocket was messed up (the zipper is stripped, basically, with the pocket gaping open and unclose-able, and the pull is missing from the zipper head – I don't know the technical terms for all those things LOL).

I called AA, waited for a callback (which came around 1:30 AM), and they said to call 800-866-4010 when they opened to report it.

Long story short, I tried on both 12/30 and 12/31 to reach someone at the 800 number and have not been able to (when I called I was either in the hold queue forever, with no one ever picking up, or else I got a message that they were closed for the holiday – I guess New Year's Eve is a holiday too now). Will they still take my claim? Or will credit card travel insurance cover this?

What adds insult to injury here is that the damaged bag was one of two AA replaced earlier this year! And the two bags that were replaced were damaged on the same trip (one outbound, one return).