Luggage claim mix up -- has this ever happened to you?
 

My college son gets home Saturday and his checked bag doesn't show up. When he gets out his claim ticket it has someone else's name on it and a completely wrong desitnation!

Of course US Air has "no word on it" (and the only reason I know that is by pretending I have a rotary phone so I could actually talk to someone there).

What I'm wondering is, at what point would you guess the person at the baggage check-in place suddenly realized they were putting on the wrong luggage tags!?

Being a rather new traveler, of course he didn't think to check - but I bet he will from now on!

Wow! sounds like a horror story. I confess, never check the tags they put on my luggage! Now I know - I must!!

Thank you for the warning, Wliwl!

But... is it possible to find out "that name's" destination to see if s/he got your luggage?

Well, according to the claim ticket, it went to West Palm Beach (it was supposed to go to Rochester NY), however, so far, it appears that West Palm Beach knows nothing about it.

My son just said to me, what if they just gave me the wrong claim ticket, and the bag itself was marked OK but it is just generally lost? Yikes! I hadn't thought of that!

Anyway, yeah, the lesson is check your luggage tickets!

On my non-stop flight home from LAX last Summer, my tags were on the bag but it was sent to JAMAICA!!
When it turned up 3 days later some beaded purses I had bought in the garment district in LA were gone. A friend of mine thinks the baggage handler who took the purses purposely sent my bag on to Jamaica to cover their tracks. The total value was about $150....but the aggravation....priceless.

I tell ya... this is why I take practically nothing with me and only carry on most of the time.

We just sent all of our ski clothes via UPS so we don't have to deal with checking baggage for our upcoming trip.

Keep us informed. I'd love to know what happens.

Always know the code of the airport where your luggage is to arrive. Then check your baggage to make sure the correct airport code is put on the luggage tag. Never fail to do this.

Also, after I had a "strange" experience whenever I use an airport shuttle service I always ask the driver which airport they are driving me to. I do not tell them which one I am go as people often say "OK" without really listening to what you are saying. My experience was a shuttle van that picked me up in Ojai. I was flying home from Burbank. I got in the shuttle and asked the driver what time they anticipated arriving at the Burbank airport. She gave me ETA. Then she called in to her office and I heard her say that she was on her way to pick up the next passenger and that she anticipated arriving at LAX at such and such a time.

I said "excuse me, what do you mean you will be arriving at LAX". I was told that is where the shuttle was going. Now I heard my daughter make the reservations and she defintely said Burbank airport.

Long story short the shuttle driver had to call her office back and inform them "someone" gave her the wrong info and the passenger (me) was flying out of Burbank. A five minute arguement developed but the company finally found another shuttle to pick up the passenger that was going to LAX and I was taken to the Burbank airport.

But if the driver had not reported in to her office or if I had not been listening to her conversation I would have ended up at LAX.

It is kind of like carpenters say "measure twice and cut once". Never take anything for granted, check and double check. Happy travels to all!

And I sure hope your sons luggage is recovered wliwl!

Oh my gosh! Can you imagine if suddenly you were at the wrong airport? That would not be good!

There are lots of great stories about Ontario airport in southern California being confused with Ontario, Canada -- people being ticketed (and sometimes even arriving in) one while expecting the other.

wliwl, was your son's name tag on the piece?

Well, he says it had the id tag on it... I bought all new ones when we went to Europe this summer, so I'm hoping that's the one that is still on there.

Another lesson I hope he's learned -- put his name and address INSIDE the suitcase too!

Well, since I have an opening here I may mention that the correct airport code for Denver is DEN -not- DIA and Kansas City is MCI -not- KCI.
KCI is Kono Indonesia!

I once had the exact same experience with US Air! I actually haven't flown them since. They called my cell phone three times that day to say that my bag was there at the airport, and each time I had to say, No, my bag was a black rolling bag - if you're talking about the brown hanging bag that has my name on it, I've told you several times that that's not mine. (I felt really bad for the owner of the brown hanging bag, too!) Anecdotally, it would seem that US Air is the primary offender - I wonder if anyone's ever had this particular problem with any other airline?...

also USAir - coming home 3 yrs ago from New Year's in Grand Cayman, we retrieved bags in Charlotte (heading to Richmond) to go thru customs. Then, you drag bags to the re-check area. All bags, including husband's golf bag, were their normal, expected weight. Got to Richmond, all bags showed up EXCEPT his clubs. "they'll be on the next plane": didn't happen. The next day, they were brought back from Hartford CT, which is what their tag now said - after we rechecked in Charlotte, the RIC tag had been removed and the Hartford tag put on.
Mid-day, they got delivered to our house, we tipped the nice old fellow who had delivered them and had set them in our foyer for us, 10 minutes later DH goes to put them away and curses - the bag was now very, very light....the culprit had opened the golf travel bag, waded around my husband's dirty clothes, which is how he likes to send them home (ick) and retrieved all his clubs, leaving for some reason the wedges....guess the person already had too many wedges....
Called USAir, very sympathetic, "oh, golly, this is worse than lost, this is pilfering...if you have the receipt, this is full replacement (the clubs were 2 months old)...." Then, it got to USAir central: oh, gosh, since it's international, we can only pay 70cents a pound or some ridiculous amount...since we don't know where it happened." Well, we knew where it happened, and to us the worst part was knowing that the Charlotte baggage people were obviously running a scam!
Whew! it felt good to get that off my chest!
Eventually, my husband got new clubs he loves, he still travels with them when needed but now often rents, and I still try my darndest to avoid checking whenever possible, and never check smaller valuables.

Here's how I handle checked luggage:

- always put my name/address on it TWICE on the outside (the airline's self-service address tag you can put on yourself, plus a permanent tag of my own with my name and phone number, sometimes my airline FF number).
- always put my name INSIDE the bag (a business card or something they can ID me with).
- never used curb-side checkin.
- always watch the person attaching the baggage claim sticker to my bag to make sure they put it on MY bag, and securely.
- double-check the airport codes on my tag and the one gone on my bag.
- get to the airport in plenty of time to make sure there's enough time for my bag to get on the flight.
- avoid super-quick connections that might risk my checked luggage not making it with me.

I've never had a bag lost for more than a day. The worst that's happened is my bag was late the same day or came on the next flight the next day.

Andrew

Just the thought of all that dirty laundry floating around the USAir system - if he is like my son, they may have condemned the bag!

Gail -- too funny! I was thinking about that. It's the reason he refuses to carry-on. Maybe they could call in some special (or...not so special) sniffer dogs.

Anyway, he went to the airport last night and still no word. They called West Palm Beach and they reported no luggage there (which I find hard to believe). They told him that the guy whose name is on his claim ticket had lost two bags, but had gotten them back.

I don't know if I should still be hopeful or not. What a pain.

Been lucky so far. But I see in today's comics that Spiderman may have someone else's luggage and that man his with the Spidey costume inside!

ozarksbill