[shapirom]

On July 20th I checked my luggage in at the Los Angeles Airport for flight 843 to Chicago with connecting flight 618 to Boston. Upon my arrival my worst traveling nightmare came true, my Expensive Andiamo travel suitcase was not on the turnstile with the other passengers. I immediately went to the United Baggage office to find out what had happened to my luggage. When the agent requested my luggage data tag provided in Los Angeles I was horrified when informed the Los Angeles agent attached the wrong locator tag to my package. From what the Boston Agent was able to figure out was that the Los Angeles agent attached another customer’s baggage tagging to my luggage and provided me that person’s documentation. She also determined that my luggage was scanned into the Dayton luggage facility that night.

The local agent immediately opened a baggage delay report (see below) and placed an electronic request into the Data facility to place my bag on flight 5766/860, which was to get my bag to me at the hotel at 11:30 one hour prior to my interview. She also informed me to call the United Primer Desk in the morning and ask assistance with them as well to insure I did not miss my interview. I then requested they, the Boston facility, provide me with a toiletries kit for my nights stay in Boston. I was informed the did not have any and instructed me to ask the hotel for this and if the hotel was not able to provide this that I might take a walk to a store (I had no car I was picked up by a service).

Upon awakening the next morning, I immediately had to wash my cloths (requiring me to wrap in a bed sheet while my clothes were washing and drying). I also took that time to contact the Premier desk and ask for assistance. This effort took a number of calls before I was able to connect with any individual who was willing to assist me. The Premier desk connected me with the baggage supervisor on duty for that morning. The individual (Mr. Sonnet) assured me that since the bag had been scanned into Dayton, I would receive it by 11:30 as promised (at this point I was becoming suspicious that it was not going to make it as it had not been placed on any aircraft).

As I suspected the 11:30 deadline came and passed and I was out of time and was picked up for my meeting (I have been waiting for this interview for almost 6 months). After the interview I had some free time prior to my departure for Logan airport. I used this time to contact the baggage 800 number to change my delivery location back to Los Angeles as I was departing Boston in two hours. When I called the computer generated information informed me that my luggage had in fact not been located and was considered missing. I then was able to connect with the agent to ask of the status. In my discussion with the agent it became clear she was being quite cagey with me in providing me any exact information regarding the present location of the bag as well as the planed deposition of it. I finally was able to determine the bag was still located in the Dayton facility and was not planned to be moved to my Los Angeles address provided. Needless to say I was quite unhappy to hear this and was informed the unit would be sent out of Friday.

On Friday morning, I again called the service to determine the current status of my luggage. I was informed the bag was still in the Dayton facility and they, the service, was unable to get Dayton to respond to any facility intercommunication. The supervisor then attempted to contact the Dayton facility on the phone with no luck as Dayton would not or could not answer the phone. The manager then promised me that he would continue to attempt to communicate with Dayton and subsequently get a release of my luggage. I was contacted again by the supervisor or any other United representative on this matter.

On Saturday morning I drove back to Los Angeles International Airport an went directly into the baggage services office. The representative spent a considerable amount of time in an attempt to first understand why Dayton had not responded to five requests for my luggage status and why they were not responding to voice inquiries as well. He then placed yet another inter-facility request into Dayton and instructed me to contact your office.

This morning I again called the baggage service to determine the status of my bag. The agent again made an inter-facility request as well as attempted to call the facility on the voice line. Both attempts failed as usual

In conclusion, I must say I am appalled and horrified by the egregious performance of the United team in the assistance of my situation. This matter has cause me a significant amount of lost time and monies and appears to continue these losses as I attempt to begin the claim process. I had always expected better treatment and response from your organization as an elite member of both Continental and United.

[jimworcs]

Outrageous... United appear to be more responsive if you write a song about your experience and post it on YouTube. If you are not able to do this, you may find they could care less. They are too big to care.

[BKK_FLYER]

Hi,

Bad from the start, to the end.. but I don't think it's a matter of "They are too big to care" as others have alleged, only because it sounds as if some of the agents you encountered did put in an honest effort to get it fixed for you..

My disagreement with the "They are too big to care." is that there really is no "they".. it's a collection of individuals.. some do care.. and yes, some don't.. but I think it's unfair to simply label them all into the same group.

Coming back to your base problem. This is one, informally called a 'tag switch', that really should NOT be happening. I know that most airlines, and I taught entry CSR/CSA classes for a short period of time at my airline, do in fact teach that you are supposed to SHOW the tag to the passenger AFTER it's applied and 'walk' them thru it.

Mr. Smith, I've tagged your one bag here to Boston today with a connection in XXX.

this way the passenger has the chance to say, "That's not my bag", or "Wrong destination" or whatever.. it gives everyone a second chance to catch errors.. which do happen, but that's the purpose to the read-back of tag.

At this point, I think UA owes you a solid apology with a reasonable level of compensation as I think, based only on what you've written, to me UA failed at multiple points in the process.. and from an internal operations perspective, I'd wonder why the Dayton station isn't clearing their WorldTracer queues more timely, as that's a basic of station level management.

the other thing that crosses my mind is that with a tag switch this usually means there's a SECOND bag out there, the one with YOUR tag on it, that's equally goofed up. So these issues are a double-impact.