Its never a good feeling when you’re one of the last people stood in an airport baggage claim area as four bags that clearly don’t belong to you make laps on in the baggage carousel. You know those bags aren’t yours, but you check their tags anyway. You don’t want to give up hope on your luggage, instead you stand there watching the little entrance that the bags come into the baggage claim area hoping that your wayward bag will appear like a lost lost dog finding its way home. But after a while the truth becomes inescapable… this dog isn’t coming home tonight.
Baggage claim offices are always the same. Grumpy forgotten airline staff, presumably too awkward and ugly to work on the check in counter, ask you a series of mumbled questions demonstrating that they might actually be more fed up than you are. Any attempt to make light of the situation is wasted. Your luggage is lost, it’s really not that funny, and if you’re making a joke then you’re only showing how inexperienced you are at the whole lost luggage game. They know only to well that in a day or so, any good humor you had about the delay in getting your luggage will have evaporated like puddles in the sun.
I arrived on Friday. My flight wasn’t complicated. I flew from Manchester to Chicago then claimed my baggage and rechecked it onto my onward flight to Portland Oregon due to depart three hours after that time. Several hours later I am that person standing in the baggage claim area losing hope as I watch the same 4 bags make laps on the carousel like riderless horses of a merry-go-round.
Quite how United Airlines managed to lose my luggage is beyond me. But the miserable baggage claim agent assures me that the bag isn’t “lost” it’s just “delayed” and it will arrive early the next morning whereupon it will be delivered to my address in Portland. No amount of screaming and shouting will help, and besides after several hours of sitting in cattle class I’ve lost the will to do much else than nod my head in agreement with whatever I am told.
My luggage doesn’t arrive as promised and with all patience and understanding gone, I call United’s 1800 baggage claim number. First off I have to dispense with the friendly voice activated robotic operator who has trouble understanding my British accent. In order to help the virtual operator I have to put on an American accent so that ‘he’ can get me through to a real person. The next problem though is worse. That ‘real person’ is an Indian call centre operator in Dheli, India, and they have little grasp of the English language, let alone the geography of the United States.
What follows is a series of fumbles and mistakes that has my luggage flown to Phoenix where it spends a night before being flown to Denver, then back to Portland despite my explicit instructions to fly the luggage to Redmond then deliver it to my hotel just down the road from there in a town called Bend.
The luggage is scanned onto a flight to Redmond that arrives just as we are driving by the airport so we elect to pick it up. However when we get to the airport we’re told that the bag has again been lost as it wasn’t on that flight that just arrived. However, in this little airport it seems the staff really do care. Three of them start calling around trying to locate my wayward luggage, and eventually it is found in a baggage hall in Portland.
It will, according to United staff at Redmond, be put on a flight from Portland to their little airport these evening then delivered to my hotel later tonight. This time I feel a little more confident that it might just get here, but in all honesty I won’t be the least bit surprised if I don’t see it until I return to Portland on Thursday.
—
Wrote the following comment on Sep 4, 2006 at 2:06 am
Good luck on that one! Sorry your baggage is getting more travel time in than you! Have a great time anyway. Love you…Donna
Wrote the following comment on Sep 4, 2006 at 2:47 am
Oh come on, admit it – you love stuff like this. You get to complain to a multitude of call centre staff, and finally write a very funny blog about the whole thing.
By the way, I was asked today what “blogging” was and whether it was rude.
Anyway.. losing your luggage is a good opportunity to buy new underwear.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 4, 2006 at 7:38 am
Yikes! I hate when they lose my luggage. Ours was lost a couple of years ago on a flight from Houston to Nashville for Christmas… we wound up having to explain to the neices and nephews why they had no gifts from us to open on Christmas day. Their looks of mis-trust turned glad when we had to have “Christmas: Part Deuax” when our bags did arrive at 2 am a few days later!
ps – welcome to the States
Wrote the following comment on Sep 4, 2006 at 7:52 am
They got the bag to me in the end. However some of the clothes were wet though? The pictures I had also packed got pretty beat up, but hey, at least I got my bag in the end.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 4, 2006 at 8:42 am
Well now you can change your clothes! Wet? I would wash everything a.s.a.p! What would make it wet? Gross….have fun on your trek through the US!
Wrote the following comment on Sep 4, 2006 at 1:53 pm
‘At least I got my bag in the end’.
This is their job. To assure that your bag goes where you do. But they wet your clothes and ruin your pictures… yet you’re still thankful that they are merely doing their job. Even if it’s a crappy one.
Yeah, I am easily irked today. ^_^ Too many experiences with that grumpy person in the lost bag counter.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 5, 2006 at 7:26 am
Wet? Hrmmm.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 6, 2006 at 6:31 am
cursed airlines!! off the subject, am i on your protected list? i want to be if possible.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 7, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Hello Simon! I met you last night at Ambrosia restaurant in Eugene, Oregon, wine tasting. It was really nice meeting you, I just wanted to say hi, exchange contact info. just in case you come back to Oregon, travel to Puerto Rico and next time I go to England, beers are on me. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip and whish you the best in all your endeavors.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 8, 2006 at 8:50 am
Hi Simon! I hope you are having a good time.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 9, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Ok. What Simon did not state in his polite well write blog is that he had to talk to three differnet people from India that said three different things. I believe one actually gave us a flight number that was going to Alaska! Also, he ended up screaming at Kate…Kat..Keith..the She-man while pacing on the side of the road. But all ended well.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 11, 2006 at 11:15 am
Will, you can blame me. I would not allow “Jonesy” (is that a pet name?) to blog when visiting me.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 11, 2006 at 10:00 am
Come on Jonesy, you may be on holiday but we expect more than one blog enrty a week :-)
Wrote the following comment on Sep 11, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Not even close!!
Wrote the following comment on Sep 11, 2006 at 12:25 pm
What are you, his wife :-)
Wrote the following comment on Sep 11, 2006 at 12:28 pm
He used to get called it in school, I don’t know, you’d never win on Mr & Mrs :-D
Wrote the following comment on Sep 12, 2006 at 1:02 am
Getting online while in Oregon is somewhat of a chore. :-)