Luggage Issues with CO - Need ideas for resolution
 

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Hello,

Recently flew my first CO flight in a long time from EWR to MAD and back. As my mother taught me to never say a bad thing about someone if you cant say something nice, I will say that the flight in BF was outstanding and I will definitely look towards using CO again the next time I have to fly to MAD. Now for the gripe...

Originally started trip from DTW to EWR, but CO cancelled flight and rebooked me on NWA. When I arrived to MAD neither myself or my brother or cousin got our bags (my borther and I had 2+ hours downtime at EWR between flights, my cousin 5+ hours!). Went to luggage desk and was told "happens all the time, must be NWAs fault". We got our luggage next day, no compensation or explanation given.

Flew back on Monday and had to fly into MAD from SCQ on IB. The IB agent checks our three bags through to EWR under my cousins ticket(she said that we needed to recheck them after customs so she couldnt check them all the way through to DTW). When I arrive in EWR, we wait an hour by the baggage carousel and no bags show up after all the bags for our flight have been run through and bags from later flights start appearing. We check with the service folks at CO and they say that we cant start a trace until we reach DTW. After we arrive at DTW we inform them of our situation, people at baggage center say "Sorry to hear of your problems, must be IBs fault". They put out a trace on the three bags and we are told it will probably be 48 hours to get the bags since they would need to fly in from Europe.

Yesterday we call CO and they say that bags arrived, they had made it to EWR on Monday but for some technical reason were not off loaded with our other bags. Bags made it to DTW by noon and were out for delivery to my cousin's house during the PM. When the baggage person came to the house no one was home, so he left one bag and left without offloading the other two. Now here's the kicker, the bag left was my brother's (with a completely different street address from my cousin's).

Planning on writing to CO to complain about baggage issues and I am looking for some ideas on what compensation to ask for. I am not Onepass (I usually fly NWA) and the odds are that I wont be flying CO soon so a voucher wont be as good. Can I ask CO for mileage credit to NWA?

Finally, the two phrases I heard during this ordeal that really backfired were "This happens all the time" (okay, so why doesnt it get fixed?) or "Its the other airline's fault" (how about saying "we will look into what happened" instead. Heard these multiple times on this trip and each time it just made my blood boil. Thanks in advance for any ideas/comments.

Jose

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Out of curiousity, were you on a paid BF ticket? If so, you probably should drive that point, because you are precisely the customer CO drools over.

It looks like in the end you got your bags back.

Airlines lose checked bags all the time. I don't think you are due any compensation since they did find the bags and they were delivered to you.

If you didn't get them back, then you are due some compensation. I think the rule in the contract of carriage limits their liability:

A copy of the contract of carriage can be downloaded from here:

http://www.continental.com/travel/po...ct/default.asp

Thank you for your responses...
 

It was a paid BF ticket and I have put that into the letter I am sending them.

As to whether I got the luggage or not, I wont know until later today. My experience with NW though has been when they lost a bag they would send me a small ($25) voucher after returning the bag to me. A small compensation, but at the same time it made me feel like they understood that a late/lost bag caused some issues.

Keep in mind that each airline has their OWN policy and you should be familiar with it before complaining too much. I understand the problems with mishandled baggage. I always verify that the correct bag tags and Elite Access (if F/BF or Elite or full Y) is properly attached to my bags when checking them in. I've never had a problem with my bags unless I give my seat at the last minute and get another flight...which then I can understand a baggage problem.

(1) Checking in at NW or IB, they would not have Elite Access tags.

(2) Do you really think it would have made a difference anyway? If so, then you have more faith in the ground crew than I do.

Sounds like you were wronged, although the blame probably lies in about 6 different places, not just CO. Still, if I were running CS, I would throw a small voucher at a paid int'l BF passenger for such a headache! But that's the least of the things I would fix!