I flew from Newark to San Francisco on September 11, 2014 on United. I had business meetings the next day, weekend social events, and then further company meetings in Las Vegas, so I had packed numerous expensive and varied outfits, etc.
When I arrived in SFO, my luggage was not there. At first I was told that it was not scanned off the plane, nor onto the conveyor belt in SFO, so it must have missed the flight. Next day it was still being located – texts were sent every 6 hours from United with no useful information.
Days went on without luggage, and many calls where it was impossible to speak to a live person that knew anything. Lots of inconsistent information was provided by United. Finally after 5 days of being told not to purchase too much replacement items, I was told to submit a claim. I find it disturbing that United doesn’t even know if the bag was on the plane; this would seem to be a security issue.
The claim form is ridiculous, and when I went to fax it the line on the United side was busy for a few hours. The limit on the liability does not cover the cost of my items.
Lesson learned – do not check luggage, do not travel with expensive luggage (Tumi), do not expect United to care if their airport employees steal your luggage, and lastly do not expect customer service from United.
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What happened? Did you get reimbursed? I hope you did! Similar thing happened to me with Delta in 2001. Yet to see my bags. I did get reimbursed 3 months later but not enough as I too had packed many expensive items 🙁