Wow, think what it might have been like if they hadn't pulled out all the stops. I don't think five and a half weeks is quick. And it certainly wasn't painless.
I could write out a blow-by-blow account of every conversation I had with British Airways and their responses to my inquiries regarding the whereabouts of my bag. But that would be redundant. Suffice it to say that the BA folks in London had some stock responses.
"It's in Paris."
"It never left Houston."
"It's being flown from London to Manchester today."
"It's in Zurich."
"It will be delivered today or tomorrow."
They also had a couple responses that were unique.
"We've asked Air France to return it but they haven't responded."
"It's at Heathrow. But you can't pick it up because we haven't completed the paperwork. That takes 24 hours."
If I questioned how it had managed to get back to Paris when it had been in Manchester the day before, the BA representative became even more surly than they started out. And surly seems to be their norm. Let's just say that every time I got on the phone with them, I could sense my blood pressure rising. After Mark's bag arrived soaking wet with the clothes damp, I wanted to register my displeasure and amazement that such a thing could happen. I was told that the lost baggage team didn't handle complaints. I would need customer service for that, but they were at a different number and not available because it was the weekend. When I asked for the customer service number on Monday morning, I was told "We don't have customer service." That was probably the first truthful words that anyone there had spoken to me! (They don't have supervisors, either.) It was at this point that I turned the handling of the problem over to American Express's Concierge service. (Good thing, too since I was preoccupied with Mark while we were in Paris.)
I noticed right away that the description of my bag that was in BA's system was not correct. It was listed as an all black, soft-sided, medium-sized bag. In fact, it has a hard-shell, and is black with a brown stripe down the middle. There is a London Fog emblem on the bag and Mark added a white Apple logo decal for easy identification. I asked them to update this information at least four times.
Finally, three days before we were supposed to fly home, I got a call from the courier in Zurich. He said they had my bag and asked if I'd like to have it delivered to the Canton Glarus address on file. Unfortunately, we'd left Canton Glarus three days earlier. They didn't seem to have the forwarding address in Italy even though I'd provided it on three separate occasions. Given the length of time it had taken them to get the bag to Zurich, I didn't think I'd have it before I went home.
By this time, we were in Italy and nearing the end of our three weeks. By this time, even American Express's Concierge service was starting to fail. They started sending me emails to update me on the status of my bag that indicated they had no idea what had transpired in the past. (One of their emails questioned the fact that one bag had been delivered.- Golly Gee - That bag was delivered on day 2. A well-documented fact that they should have known.)
After I got home, I updated my address again and started calling BA in the US. (They DO have customer service in the US! And you can talk to them without them saying something stupid that makes your blood pressure go up.) Although, depending on what day of the week it was, they told me my bag was in Paris, in Zurich, in Rome, or in London. One day I called and got a young man named Rasheed. When I asked him where my bag was that day, it was pretty obvious he didn't know, because he said, "Ma'am, I'm not sure what you want me to tell you." How about the truth for a change? I told Rasheed that he and I were going to become best friends, because I was going to call him every day until my bag was returned. Rasheed told me he would personally track down my bag and said I should feel free to ask for him when I called! He also advised me to go ahead and file the claim for the lost bag. (I'd been putting it off because documenting everything in the bag, when I bought each item and how much I'd paid for them, seemed a daunting task. I had hoped to avoid it. But on his advice, I got busy with it and it only took about three days.) When I called back the next week and asked for Rasheed, I was told that no one named Rasheed worked at BA nor had anyone named Rasheed worked there in well over a year. And whoever this new guy was didn't have any clue where my bag was. But he could tell me that the description and my phone number still hadn't been updated in their system. Seriously?? How many times would I have to ask for this to be changed? He gave me his name and told me to ask for him, but I didn't bother writing it down.
But whoever he was, he must have finally changed the description in the BA system because the bag was back in my possession within a few days of that conversation. It came back with no fanfare. The FedEx guy making the delivery didn't even bother to ring the doorbell. It just happened that we were watching the news and saw someone come to the door, appear to change his mind and leave. No phone calls - no email announcements. Nothing. Just my bag sitting at the door waiting to be welcomed home. I'm so glad I got it back because there were four things in there that I forgot to list on the claim form.
Oh yeah, the claim form. If they think this gets them off the hook for all that stuff I was forced to buy in Europe - they should think again.
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