Do you mind sharing with us which card you have because I am interested in some similar policy to have, just in case...

HSBC Premier Mastercard or Visa.

As long as your airline ticket is bought with the card, it covers Loss or Baggage Delay. Between 6 hours and 48 hours of delayed luggage, coverage is equivalent US$560. After 48 hours, and within 4 days coverage is US$3500. If luggage is found after than time, you still get to keep all the expenses.

I'm also covered under AIG's TravelGuard insurance which covers $200 a day after the initial 12 hours baggage delay. They also helped me track the bag, which I didn't even know that they could do that!

I don't know about you, but there are only a couple of countries where my bank has branches. Most of my travels are not in those countries. Cashing a cheque would be much easier than depositing it into my account.

And even if you have a branch those cross border transactions often don't work even within the same banking group.

I can top that - AA managed to lose my bag on an ORD-JFK nonstop, and never found it. I went back to JFK the next day and looked through the lost luggage rooms to no avail. They paid my damages claim in full - though it took them months to do so.

At least IB eventually finds your bags?

when i first came to SVQ many years ago, IB refused to board me in MAD on the connecting flight as 'there has not been enough time to transfer your bag' or something like that, as i recall the inbound flight was delayed... so i had 4 hours enforced wait in the old old lounge.. and then promptly arrived in Seville to see my bag waiting there for me.

frustrating

If I tried to deposit a check drawn in USD on a US bank in my country, I've been told it would take upwards of 30 days to clear and for the funds become available. Checks are very US-centric these days and most of the rest of the banking world has long moved on.

Not in my country - I depositted a cheque drawn on a US bank to my credit union (NOTE, NOT a bank) here in Australia a few weeks ago, and they cleared it in five working days (I don't know if the intervening weekend helped out there).

And this is with a credit union, not a bank, and the credit union has to pass it through the banking process, meaning it adds an extre process into it all.

Seems like some countries financial systems are a little bit backward when it comes to dealing with other countries financial systems.

Dave

Was it actually completely cleared or was the amount added to available funds?

Foreign cheques do, ime, take longer to clear than domestic cheques but some banks do permit access to the funds before the full clearance process completes. There is , in this situation, a risk of the funds being reversed should the overseas bank reject the cheque

The local bank cannot clear it any quicker than the foreign bank will accept it in

Dave

In many countries, processing a cheque issued in another jurisdiction not only takes long but also often involves substantially higher costs. Probably one of the worst possible method of payment for a small sum like $200.

While IB can certainly be frustrating to deal with if anything goes wrong, I think they treated me more than fairly as an AA Plat when I lived in Madrid.

I had lounge access in MAD when I was traveling anywhere on IB or BA (which was pretty much wherever I wanted to go) even though I was on discounted Y tickets.

I was even upgraded once to J on a domestic leg (within Spain.)

Once, BA lost my golf clubs on a trip from the UK back to MAD and IB was charged with delivering it. It took 6 days, but everything was intact. And no, they were not sympathetic.

Exactly, "In Finland, banks stopped issuing personal cheques in about 1993. All Nordic countries have used an interconnected international Giro system since the 1950s, and in Sweden cheques are now totally abandoned. Also electronic payments across the European Union are now fast and low-cost."

I started my banking early 80's and I have never received a cheque book nor used one. My recall of cheques is from the 70's when my father used them somewhere occasionally. He used them to pay at the shops, not to deposit money to his account at the bank. And yes, I did have to ask the AA person what I do with the cheque, do all shops accept it or how does it work.

If they stop the cheques in 1993, that means that there's been very little use for them 10+ years before that..

Update: My return from SVQ-BRU via MAD

Monday 3 Nov 900am: 1030am flight delayed to 1230pm. Which meant that I would miss my 140pm connection to BRU. So IB at SVQ puts me on the 8pm departure as the 410pm flight is full. 6 hours at MAD. The lounge mentioned above is definitely not in the North terminal! SVQ agent also just hand wrote baggage tag as her baggage tag printer is broken. She was feeling just as frustrated herself as she couldn't put me on an earlier flight, and people kept coming up to the counter to ask her for other things. The man standing behind me kept asking me (in Spanish) if I was in Business Class! Which I was n't but I think a AAdvantage Platinum card suffices my reason to check in at the Business Class counter.

1030pm: Arrived in BRU amidst fog ! I was nervous when "baggage delay" delayed baggage delivery by 30 minutes. I have never been so relieved to see my bag come off the carousel !

1130pm: Checked into the BRU airport Sheraton as I wasn't going to schlep to the City Four Points hotel.

Now I'm on the Thalys back to Germany! Hi ho all !

Next time, I'm taking Vueling!

completely agree with first post. I often travel from UK to madrid and always book a BA flight. However the inbound/outbound flight is code shared with Iberia and I often get stuck on a crappy IB plane on one leg of the trip. What really annoys me is that I pay more for a BA fare, that would include drinks/meal on BA. But the IB flight is no frills and you have to pay for everything. I've complained to BA every time this occurs and occasionally am partly refunded. But I don't understand why BA put up with this level of service from IB.

Hi,

Just to add my 2 cents to this topic, I do agree that IB is quite a "black sheep" of the flock. One of the worst airlines in Europe and even worst than any US airline service. I find the FA's always surly and ground staff are totally horrible. I avoid them as plague even.
Funny thing is that even KLM FA's knows how bad the service is onboard IB. I had a discussion once with some KLM FA's and they were also commenting on how ridiculous their ground and air service are compared to all European airlines.
I would even dare say that from my few experiences with Ryanair's FA's, they are much way better than those from IB.

I always wonder why a country with such friendly people can have such surly FA's and product.