Fates

I normally fly AF but, after a cancelled flight, was rerouted onto BA. My flight landed on Dec 19th and my baggage was not there - it still hasn’t been returned to me. I needed to purchase quite a few necessities (aprox. $1000) and submitted receipts to BA. I have heard nothing but the generic “covid has made it impossible for us effectively run an airline” boilerplate nonsense.

With AF, I’m used to these claims being dealt with in aprox. 2 weeks. Does anyone have any sense of when BA is likely to deal with this? They hide their customer service away from phones so it’s impossible to get any clarity from them. Are there any other avenues I could pursue? It’s obviously frustrating to be out of pocket for this much money on a seemingly indefinite timeline. And this is before we even get into compensation for the lost luggage and contents itself.

How can BA be getting away with this insanely poor timeline for dealing with customer claims?

corporate-wage-slave

If the claim was for essential items such as clothes and cosmetics, usually repayment will be within a few weeks. There are some big delays on some issues, but so long as you used the right option in the Portal then it shouldn't take too long. However repayment within 2 weeks is probably an optimistic position.

Fates

oh, wow, ok. That would be much better. I’d heard horror stories about people waiting months and months these days. Hope they’re just unfounded rumours.

Additionally, have you had any experience with the discrepancy between the Montreal Convention and what BA states on their website? BA say that essential items need to be claimed
for within 21 days of the flight, whereas the Montreal Convention is very clear that the claim must be made within 21 days of the bag being returned to the passenger.

corporate-wage-slave

They are fairly flexible on that. What they want is some sort of claim made within 21 days for the missing bag - as a bag - sometimes people don't have receipts available, or they send them via the mail and that's fine. They will take a harder line if you don't raise a WorldTracer report and then claim for mysterious items several months later. CEDR handles baggage claims not resolved by BA, and they won't accept a complaint before 8 weeks, so there's no point BA getting too rigid on this one.

Fates

Sorry for the double post

Fates

Clearly my phone got excited and posted this three times. Sorry.

Fates

Great! Hopefully this won’t be as onerous as I was expecting.

Thanks for all the detailed info!