praveen2710

Hi,
Etihad lost my luggage and I have been going back and forth with them for over 3 months now .They have given an compensation of 940 and after negotiating they they increases to 1300 .

One day they suddenly out of random dropped it to 600 . I have asked them for explanation and they are not replying.

I wanted to know what are my chances to sue them in small claims court for harassment and all the time of mine wasted in dealing with them and also on how they are toying around with claim amount.

DebitNM

Where do you live? IF in the US, not sure you can sue them in small claims court here. They need to be served papers. I am not sure you could serve papers on a ticket agent or gate agent, so I "think" that you can't.

This might be better:

http://elliott.org/

Kathie

You cannot sue in small claims court for "harassment" nor would what the have done meet the legal definition of harassment.

When was this flight, and between which two cities?

NewbE

If you sue in small claims court, you have to specify an amount; the maximum allowed varies by state. And you will have to find a way to convince the court of the validity of the amount you specify. Keep in mind that all your stuff--clothes, shoes, the suitcase itself--is considered used, and so you can't claim replacement cost but rather depreciated value. I mean, you can TRY to claim replacement cost, but it is unlikely to be awarded.

And that's all assuming you live in the US. You would file in your sate of residence.

All in all, it might be easier to ask a consumer watchdog to fight for you...

praveen2710

I live in Kansas City , Missouri . The thing that annoys me most is that they specified a certain amount and suddenly without explanation reduced it to half and since then are ignoring my emails.

The annoying thing is that since the baggage was lost when I was going to india. I am needing to talk and email personnel in india and they are very reluctant to reply to emails.

Christina

"harassment"? you must be kidding.

Maybe they dropped it to 600 because they were getting tired of you negotiating.

You'd have to get a lawyer and sue in court and add a bunch of damages for mental anguish or whatever they call it. Over a lost suitcase? I don't think so. Besides, your lawyer would probably cost more.

The problem is this is just negotiating as it is very difficult to prove what value anything in checked luggage is. First, they have no idea what you really had in it, there isn't any way to prove that. Second, the only way it could be worth a whole lot and you could prove it would be if you just bought something really expensive and had the receipts--I don't know how you prove such a thing was actually in the bag, though.

At least what you want is below the limits of liability, I believe. I'm no lawyer, there are some on FOdors -- I think you can sue a foreign company if they do business in your state regularly.

Geordie

Did you have travel insurance or use a cc which might cover some of the costs, I'm assuming you needed to buy replacement items.

Do you know where the bag went missing, pretty sure they don't fly to Kansas so maybe they don't think they are entirely responsible

NewbE

If I were you, I would rain fire down on Etihad on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, early and often. Hashtag to link up with others complaining about lost luggage and/or Etihad. In my experience, that approach is effective in shaming a company into doing the right thing. Emails are too easy to ignore.

And I'd contact consumer watchdogs like The Haggler at the New York Times, elliott, maybe a local TV channel's consumer crew (such as Eight on Your Side).

Suing would be my least attractive option. As Christina says, unless you have receipts and can prove that very expensive items were in your luggage, a court will not value your stuff as highly as you do. (In small claims court, the burden of proof is lighter; you just have to make sense to the judge. But it's not nothing.)

DebitNM

Was the luggage lost and never found or was it lost and then you eventually got it back?

BigRuss

>

This is actually a good move. My oldies can barely discern the difference between all the various social media outlets and received a quick response when b-tching about a certain US-based airline (don't recall if it's the one that absorbed Northwest, or the one that ate UScAir) when the elders signed up on Twitter to register their concerns. Companies care about public perception, even airlines. Some actually care about customer satisfaction.

As for your other thought: forget it. Etihad doesn't care about one passenger in KC Mo filing a small claims case against it because it has no presence in your town and you probably won't be able to stick a small claims judgment there. No personal jurisdiction = no case. I'd bet there's no personal jurisdiction over Etihad in Missouri and I don't gamble.

But let's assume the small claims judge, many of whom are not even lawyers and don't care about the picayune requirements of jurisdiction, lets your case go forward even if Etihad is not subject to jurisdiction in Missouri. If you actually win a judgment, how are you going to collect if Etihad has no property in Missouri? Do you think it'll just pay because it's nice? Or because a state court in a state it has no dealings with has ordered it to? Etihad is a government-backed airline with the international cover of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the finger it'd give to your small claims judge is the one in the middle . . .

Ackislander

Next time, take the $1300.

nytraveler

First you cannot sue for harassment - they are not harassing you - just ignoring you. To be harassment you need them to be threatening you, calling you at all hours, driving by your house, contacting your employer, etc.

As for compensation the most you will get is depreciated value of what you had in the bag and you will have to have some indication of what was in there and value based on receipts etc.

So I don;t think that small claims court will do you any good.

I would contact one of more of the ombundsmen for travel problems to try to convince them to increase what they will pay.

If the company does not have a legal presence in your state small claims court would not be able to give you a finding you can enforce. (The court only says what you are owed - you have to find a way to collect and if they have no funds in the state there is no way to seize anything.)