katyspcc

so it's been already nearly 10 days ??! 6 days for me. how can you cope with that? how can anyone cope with that?!

did you call the landline? anything useful you got? do you know where your baggage is now at the moment? did you claim for the 250 Euro? i filed in the 72 hours notice they gave me..but im pretty sure that they did not do anything with it, coz they always ignore emails.

just let me know if you hear sth!!! Goodluck mate!!

NB: too bad the helpline doesn't work on Sat and Sun..only from 9am-noon on weekdays....!!!

Teresa Inskip

I will call the landline once we land back in Hel. For their sake they better have our current suitcase (a loner) the moment we get off the flight or hell shall hath no fury

This is the way we have understood it to work: IF you get your suitcase back, you have up to 21 days from that date to file for the refund of 70€ +50% of whatever expenses you incurred.

If your suitcase does not show up? Then after 21 days of the day listed on your missing luggage paper thingy, you are entitled to file for refund of the 250€. This is Finnair policy. Not sure if it also applies that if it gets lost for good that you are also entitled for the 70€ plus refund, it makes sense you would as we needed basic clothing and toiletires while we were here.

How do you handle it? In our case maybe a little easier as we stayed with family and could wash clothing on a regular basis. But yeah it sucks when all your nice clothing that planned on wearing over the holidays, some DVDs you planned to watch, perfume, and study books are sitting in a suitcase that you may never see again. And to top it all off another person has posted that he just got his suitcases and they had been left out in the weather and had got soaked. Add that to the smoked salmon and fresh paté from K Supermarket and I am not even sure I will want to open the lugagge if I ever see it again.

I think that what adds insult to injury here is the claim that the issue with the luggage is sorted. Totally untrue or we would all not be posting here, now would we.

helahela

I join the long list of people who's luggage has gone missing. had a 3 hour layover from TLL-HEL-MAN. My bag turned up in MAN. My wife's bag didn't. Does my head in as it's now the 5th time in a row.

Does anyone know a good customer service place to complain to?

TTL

I am quite certain, that the situation will not improve before the currently employed baggage mishandlers have been replaced by new ones.

It has been published, that when they worked for AY, they could go the extra mile during peak hours. Nowadays, for the outsourced company Barona, they just work (in apparently very leisurely fashion).

Hopefully, gradually the ground handling business in Finland will get rid of the blood red communist worker unions with their dirty tricks.

mosburger

Ditto. I'm all for labour unions as such and understand that nobody wants to give up privileges. But then the blokes should strike as they did before. Now there is a settlement which they clearly do not respect.

And I do think they understand the precarious situation airlines are in at the moment. It seems at least to me their goal is to create a crisis and hope that the government has to intervene and maybe "nationalize" the airline in some way. Then they could again be government employees and not worry about shareholder value or work efficiency.

WilcoRoger

From what I understand it's not so much that the handlers do any industrial action, but more like if "working time is 8-16" they won't touch a bag at 16:01. If the next shift is still in the locker room, it's "not my problem" Or if lunch break is 11:30-12:00, no bag will be touched in this period. Same for coffee breaks, etc.

Finnair, on the other hand managed to develop a bad situation into a PR nightmare. Today I fly them with checked luggage, I dread what will show up at the other end and what not.

fresco1971

My baggage was lost *only* on the 30th and I got back today (exactly 85 hours late).

Unfortunately it must have left for most of those hours under rain/snow as most of the stuff inside is dump (goodbye Christmas presents...).

Do you know if I am entitled to a refund (for delay and/or damage?). HKG was my final destination and is my place of residence (so Amex wont cover anything).

On a different note, while inquiring about my bag before boarding the HEL-HKG flight I met Mr. Tero Lampen, the Director of sales and Product development of NorthPort, the new company handling so efficiently our luggages.

Mr. Lampen gave me his business card while promising that he would personally put my bag on next flight in case it would not make it on mine...he did not but was nice (and frustrated about the situation).

Maybe you can try contacting him directly. If interested, please PM me.

Hope this helps

PS. Needless to say... no more AY for me, luckily CX will start flying to MXP soon!

Thalassa

Actually, that is not quite how it goes.

NorthPort is a subsidiary of Finnair's that provides a lot of the ground services at HEL. However, baggage handling services were sold to Barona, which is best known as a company providing temp workers.

The sale of the baggage handling business and the transfer of the staff to Barona is one of the main triggers of the current mess. The union is unhappy, which has resulted in both overt and covert industrial actions. This is compounded by poor communication between Finnair and Barona and by truly epicly bad customer service/communication by Finnair.

Finnair has handled the whole situation incredibly badly and a lot of passengers have gotten a really raw deal.

Cheers,
T.

Thalassa

I think that is a slightly one-eyed view of the situation. Why should the baggage handlers go the extra mile at this point since they have been sold as cattle to a temp agency with no or little notice.

Finnair has clearly shown very little loyalty to them -- what obligates them to be loyal? Loyalty is a two-way street.

The baggage handlers and the union are probably quite rational and they do realize that Finnair is in deep trouble but the actions and attitude of Finnair management gives them little incentive to be flexible.

The blood red communist worker unions as you succinctly call them are certainly not blameless or perfect but they have done a hell of a lot to improv the bargaining power of the working man against corporations and create a better society.

Cheers,
T.

Trav1970

Contract of employment is also a two-way street. The employer pays salary, and the employee performs work. As far as I know, there has been no claims that Barona would not pay salary for the baggage handlers, but the concept of work seems to be a bit lost with the baggage handlers.

I just had the "pleasure" of waiting for my luggage for two hours after landing in HEL today. While waiting for the second hour, I was enjoying a thought of packing 30 kg of loose bowling balls to a large suitcase with no handles for my next domestic trip.

TTL

Make it 20K then they take it along unless not connecting from business trip abroad...

ramo

Apparently that is exactly what is happening right now. The employees are doing exactly the hours that their contract requires, and not a minute more. When they still were directly employed by AY, they had an incentive to sometimes work more than they were paid for, for the good of their company. That incentive is now gone, and we all suffer for this mistake by AY.

I think that the only sensible way out of this situation would be to cancel the deal with Barona, and take the package handlers back to AY. I wouldn't count on this happening though, since that would require that the AY management actually admits being wrong with the outsourcing deal in the first place.

mosburger

All other airlines flying to and from HEL are using outsourcing companies for their baggage handling, isn't that the case? Is there something special about the ex-Finnair baggage handlers that makes them more skilled or professional than others? It sure doesn't seem so.

Why should these blokes be rewarded for troublemaking? In the current recession it's not like they would be able to find work elsewhere that easily...I think it's most likely that they would be on unemployment benefits it not emplyoed by Barona.

TTL

Indeed, that is the way it is.

In KUO we have an excepionally nice working and nice attituce company doing the AY business, Ready To Go (RTG).

Rest of the companies doing as well are ISS and AirPro. Latter two work for SK/KF and charters.l

Thalassa

Finnair/NorthPort/Barona are not going to reverse the deal -- nor do I think they should. What they should have done (and should still do) is negotiate in good faith with the baggage handlers about how to handle this situation.

And I am not suggesting the baggage handlers should be rewarded. But Finnair has just sold them en masse (without warning) to a temp agency, which leads to believe they will be shifted to a different collective bargaining agreement with less job security and less stable employment conditions than before as soon as the law allows.

Times are tough, Finnair is suffering, yes this is all true. But the way the company has acted and the way they have treated the baggage handlers as nameless, faceless, identityless cogs in the machinery is not likely to raise their work morale.

The idea of people having low-level employees to be grateful to companies to have a job, at any conditions and without reciprocal commitment and give and take, is IMHO outdated. A company consists of people first and foremost from the CEO to the baggage handlers and janitors. People should be treated with respect, which, based on the information available to me, the baggage handlers have not gotten in this case.

While arrangements like this are often unavoidable, the effects of reroganizations are often asymmetric. The baggage handlers (in this particular case) get to feel the pain when the company is struggling -- which is fair. But when the company does better again, do they get some sort of upside? I am afraid not. If the only upside is hanging on to a job with toughening conditions, that is a pretty raw deal.

Cheers,
T.