Offload baggage fee
 

I have recently fallen foul of a rule that requires a payment of 275 euros per bag to retrieve my two bags from Amsterdam airport, when I wanted to break my flight in ams rather than fly to LHR.

On a flight from muscat with KLM, ticketed to LHR, I requested my luggage be tagged to ams only as I had made alternate plans for my trip. This was the return leg of a London to muscat KLM flight. At muscat I was told I needed to buy another ticket if I only wanted to fly to ams. At that late stage the cost was prohibitive, so I decided to continue my journey and ask for my bags at ams.

I was told in the ams lounge that the cost to search for my bags would be 275 euros. As this was only slightly more than the cost of a flight from London to geneva, my intended destination, due to the hassle involved I decided to pay this to get my bags back

After a lot of run around to recover my bags I ended up at the ticket desk, where I was charged 275 each person for the luggage recover! By now it was too late to go with the bags to London, so other than abandoning the luggage I had no choice but pay 550 euros , to get my luggage.

Does anyone know if there is a way of recovering this cost, or what other options would be availabile if you want to break your journey on a return section in future?

'Breaking' your trip is forbidden by the Conditions of Carriage. You'd have to pay a hefty change fee.

I recently wrote about a similar experience here (I wrote the fee as €225, perhaps I got the amount wrong, or perhaps it's since gone up).

In fairness, the KLM website explicitly details the baggage carriage policy here. You cannot unilaterally have your bags short-checked (otherwise, you should book the ticket that corresponds to the journey you actually want to fly, or that meets the requirements for having bags delivered at intermediate points). And if you do not intend to fly the ticket as flown, and clearly say this to the agent, then that also breaches the conditions of carriage, and the ticket would have to be changed to allow this (and re-priced).

As KLM have clearly specified their policy, I don't think you can now come to any further agreement on the matter given that you have already handed over the cash and the matter is closed as far as they are concerned. I know that some mavericks might suggest that such customer-unfriendly policies could and should be challenged, and you might find a lawyer who will take up the case, but I think you would merely be throwing good money after bad.

The other options: pay to change your ticket. Of course, depending on how flexible your ticket is, and how soon in advance of departure you do this, this can work out to be very expensive. However, if you think you may end up needing to change a flight, then perhaps it's worthwhile paying extra for a certain degree of flexibility in the ticket.

In your case, seeing as you presumably had an inflexible economy ticket, I would have flown the ticket as booked, and bought an extra ticket from London to Geneva (it appears you paid separately for an extra ticket from Amsterdam to Geneva, anyway). The cost difference in the extra ticket wouldn't have been much, and you'd have avoided the €550 penalty.

I just think it might be a way of discouraging passenger to break the trip ,so the fare rules would be complied ,at same time airlines offer a chance to the passenger who really need re-schedule the plan due to unexpected event not to serious but worth it to pay a certain money
if they specifically inform you of the payment of 275EURO you need to pay to get your bag during transit ,might it is hardly to get back just my humble point

Surely insurance would cover this

Why do you think that this should be covered by insurance?

I just posted this in the related thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/20555183-post132.html) but shortchecking does work, at least it did for me. While I would generally heed Irishguy's advice in this regard, it seems that the check-in agent has discretion in this regard... but of course that's probably nothing to rely on.

1. OP's underlying problem is that he wanted to change his ticket without paying the penalties for making the change.
2. Baggage is transported in association with the ticketed route. In other words, if you are flying AAA-BBB with a connection at CCC, your bags are tagged to BBB. If you want them tagged to CCC, that's a red flag that you are trying to pull a "hidden city" on the carrier and want an unpaid change.
3. Not only is the fee a way to discourage what OP did, but it recompenses KL for the expense of manually locating and retrieving the bags. In an automated system, it's expensive and causes delays and those costs ought to be on the pax who wants the special service, not part of everybody's ticket cost.
4. I certainly haven't reviewed every insurance policy available in every country, but I would be very surprised if a cost associated with a voluntary change is covered absent some provable outside issue such as a documented medical need.