Southwest Airlines: Sorry, your lost bag never existed

Is that the end of this post? No resolution, just a lost bag? I really hope that they were able to recover some compensation or something. Because “you lost your receipt” works when returning something to a store. Not when an airline loses your bag.
Pretty ridiculous story!

I am not sure what CRS SW uses, but you would have to think that for at least 48-72 hours the e-bag tag would also appear in the PNR record if you simply knew where to look. In addtition, if they had filed a tracer- that would have included that info anyway, wouldn’t?

I don’t buy the SW defence at all. I would escalate it. If you get no satisfaction from customer service, what I would recoemment you do is write a “management complaint” letter directly to the Office of the President.

If all else fails, go buy yourself a share of LUV stock and then write to investor relations and say as an shareholder you would like some assitance with the service your received.

That result is utterly ridiculous. Are southwest computer systems so antiquated that they cannot verify the existence of luggage without a tag. On several occassions I’ve lost my luggage tag while flying American. One the few instances where the bags were delayed, the missing luggage department has been able to obtain the claim number and write it on the claim that I submitted to American Airlines. I always assumed that this was the norm.

One more reason to avoid South-worst.

Are these people new to flying? I thought everyone who has ever flown knows you must hang on tightly to the bag claim if you are brave enough to check a bag.
That is the PROOF that you actually checked it. Of course many airlines now add the bag check number to your boarding pass. Without the claim check I don’t think they have a leg to stand on.

Southwest claim that they need a receipt is another example of how they, in particular, refuse to live up to their responsibility and boomerang it back to the customer. When you check a bag every computer system that I know adds the bag tag number to the check in record. At some airlines, Frontier for example, the claim number is also printed on the boarding pass stub so if the bag claim check is misplaced, the info is still readily available. Southwest should have been able to look up the claim check number with, or without, the actual claim receipt.

Serously, Wow, I am disapointend in SWA, thats not a good way to show your luv to your passengers. I just flew american to istanbul via london from boston, with the 2nd leg on BA. some how my bag did not make it on the flight. I had lost the claim, but I got compensation at the airport, to cover expenses for the day with out my bag, then my bag delivered to me, even though I am an hour from the airport. Then they gave me 15000 AA miles and a 100 dollar BA voucher. It was pretty great, though it was probably cause I contacted both airlines, and both were helpful.

I take a digital camera with me when I travel, and I make it a point to take a picture of my bag at the start of my trip, usually in the check-in area if possible.

I’ve never had my bags lost, but I figure I will have a much easier time with the claim if I can provide the airline with a picture of what the baggage looked like minutes before checking it in with them.

I also make sure to print out my itinerary and contact info on an 8″x11″ sheet of paper, place it in a clear paper holder, and place that in my luggage. That way, the airline can still get my luggage to me in the event that it’s misplaced.

Well… my first instinct was to criticize Southwest, but it appears from what they’re reporting here that Southwest doesn’t show that a bag was ever checked, and the passenger can’t prove otherwise.

Now, I’m not saying this particular passenger is lying. On the other hand, I wouldn’t put it past someone to submit a fraudulent claim for a lost bag, hoping to make up some money lost, say, in Las Vegas.

On the flip side, I’ve seen another airline (Airtran) *grossly* mishandle a group of checked bags. On departure from DC, a group of 3 of us checked two bags each. The ticket agent insisted we put all six bags together for him to handle, even though they didn’t all belong to one person. Of course, he mixed them up, putting tags for one person on another’s bags. We found out because one of the mislabeled bags contained a cigar cutter and some cigar residue in a plastic bag, which some overzealous inspector thought was “drug paraphernalia”. The person whose name appeared on the airline luggage tag was hauled out of the waiting area and almost missed his plane because he kept insisting that he had never seen the items they kept waving at him, and he insisted that the bag they were pointing at wasn’t his. Only after half an hour of questioning did they bother to compare the airline tag with the owner’s luggage tag – then calling up the right person who identified the items.

It’s entirely possible a Southwest agent printed a tag for the wrong party and stuck it on their bag. If the other party’s destination was different, the bag would have been routed god knows where, unclaimed, and might still be sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

The question I’ve always had: When I claim my luggage on the carousel, nobody checks to see if I’ve got the tags to match up. What’s to stop someone else from taking my bag (or even me claiming my own bag), then turning the receipts in to the lost luggage office and claiming the airline lost them? Basically, the whole system seems to depend on an extraordinary level of honesty among travelers.

Wow, Chris, you are indeed a miracle worker! Before 8:26 am, you report this story. 2 hours later, at 10:41, WN submits a comment here stating that there is no record of the bag even being checked in. 2:14 PM, less than 4 hour later, the bag magically appears!

It’s like divine intervention, really! ;)

I do have to commend WN and Ms. Berg from actually reading the blog and posting here, though. Even if the story is a bit strange…

@kevin

The question as to whether Sophia checked the bag has been resolved. SW found the bag and returned to her. And while I am happy that SW ultimately did the right thing, by the same token, it was Sw that lost the bad and SW which denied the claim because its computer couldn’t find the bag.

You know, this kind of makes me want to fly SWA less (not that I ever do anyways).

A rep from SWA came on here, and while not directly saying it, accused the passenger of lying about the checked bag, while in the meantime, 1) SWA’s Res Software is obviously flawed and 2) her bag was indeed lost.

Its great that SWA found it, but, what if she didnt press the issue by bringing it to Chris?? How many times have they done this before, and the customer just gave up and received no compensation?

In Ref to (On March 17th, 2009 at 8:41 pm Dan) “A rep from SWA came on here, and while not directly saying it, accused the passenger of lying about the checked bag”

Where in the SWA rep’s post does this information come from? I read it thrice and still don’t see this accusation you speak of. The SWA rep listed the facts as they were known at that time, i.e., the passenger didn’t have a claim check and the baggage check number wasn’t in their system. Period. Nothing more, nothing less. Before you accuse someone of something you should get your facts straight. And those are the facts.

Rob, I back up Dan’s comment that without directly coming out and saying it, Ms. Berg implied Sophia was lying about checking a bag. What do you think Paula Berg meant when she said, “In this case, the problem was not only that Sophia did not have her claim check, but that, in addition to that, there is no record at all of her having checked in a bag with us at her point of departure…

Several Southwest Employees have researched this matter in an attempt to find answers and resolution for both Deric and Sophia. However, again, our Employees have found no evidence that Sophia ever checked a bag….

In this case, however, the two primary means we have for logging, tracking, and finding lost/delayed baggage – a) the information in the flight record and b) the Customer claim check – fail to produce any evidence that a bag was ever checked.”

No less than 3 times she said there was no evidence Sophia ever checked a bag. To me that implies that WN believed Sophia was lying about ever checking a bag. You obviously feel differently. I think Ms. Berg’s comment says a whole lot more than there was no claim check and no bag check number in the system but that is my opinion. Just as you have your opinion.

The only facts are that WN said the bag did not exist in its system and now it has magically reappeared hours after Chris posted this story on his blog.

I concur with Dan and Jennifer. The bag appears shortly after SWA is exposed to negative publicity, but despite numerous prior communications, the bags cannot be located and an inference that no bag was actually checked. To me, that means that SWA didn’t do all that it could as it quickly found the bags when it was in SWA’s interest to do so.

Perhaps the bag was checked in Derek’s name and not hers. That would be the only way there was no record of it.

As far as needing a claim check, I find that pretty far fetched. That would be like me dropping off my car at the repair shop, then coming back later to pick it up and them telling me that since i don’t have some little ticket that they either cannot locate my car and therefore not responsible, or that they cannot give me my car back. It would also surprise me that someone couldn’t go back and look at security footage for the date and time of check in and see that she indeed had a bag. Other ways to verify someone checking a bag besides looking in your computer system under one name.

Here you go – small claims court. RIGHT NOW. Here’s why.

Airlines are required to maintain records of every flight. That record contains a list of bags that are checked since they need to account for it on the weight and balance for the airplane. That record is what Southwest was looking for – maybe THEY lost it. If they lost it, and you discover they lost it, then they may be somewhat more willing to pay you since they will need to admit they lost records mandated by federal law.

You still need to prove what you put in the bag and its value – but – this is the benefit of actually paying to check bags- they airline has a paper trail receiving payment.

File the case, get it served, send the request for production of ‘all documents created or generated by, or in the possession of Southwest airlines pertaining to Flight XXX on date YYY” subpeona.

Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to have a system that automatically adds the information to the passenger record whenever a tag and claim ticket are generated?

Someone has to manually add that information in, though, such as via scanner or so.

Jennifer & Carver, thanks for reinforcing my point!

Chris, Do you know when the original flight was taken? I’m just curious as to how long Southwest left the couple in limbo.

On a side note, I had the opposite problem flying from Vegas to Boston over new years this year on Delta. I had a connection in JFK, and I called Delta’s Medallion line, while in JFK to get on an earlier flight. The rep on the phone couldn’t change me, becuase the system showed I had a checked bag. It took a pledge to a JFK supervisor, that if they changed me to the earlier flight, that I wouldn’t hold Delta responsible for my mysterious non-existant checked bag.

One wonders if the bag would have been found had this story not reported on Elliot.org.

Ever since Southwest started to expand, I began to wonder if they were going to turn into just another airline. Sadly, it appears as if that might be coming true. Why do businesses insist on becoming bigger? What’s wrong with staying small and being good (and profitable) at it?

Ha, this just goes to show how often the airline mishandle our bags. A bag that never existed suddenly shows up? Wow, how did that happen, you just told your customer that her bag didn’t exist making her look like a liar. I hope you send her a letter of apology besides her bag.

On a side note and unless this has changed, your baggage ticket stub is worthless within days of you flying – they reuse the numbers. NW lost our four bags and a carseat which was never recovered. They called me twice to see if a bag with a matching ticket number had the same contents as I was missing. It turned out within a few days of my bags going missing the were reusing the numbers…no wonder they never recovered a single bag. You would think the moment a bag goes missing the would not reuse a number until the case has been solved.

Folks – I just wanted to circle back and address some of the concerns raised in the comments above.

Aaron – We were aware of the problem with Sophia’s bag prior to Chris running his post here, and, as I mentioned, several Employees had worked on the case trying to find the bag – despite the fact that we had neither a record of the bag being checked in or a claim ticket that could serve as confirmation. Although we were unable to offer compensation based on the evidence we had at the time, our tracing efforts did not stop, and, ultimately, proved successful in getting Sophia’s property returned.

Josh – you raise a logical question– “why wasn’t the bag in the computer system?” Unfortunately, I don’t have a definitive answer. Was it human error? Was it some sort of computer glitch? We really don’t know. But we know that mistakes sometimes happen, which is why we have a simple system of checks and balances in place – in addition to the information that is added to the flight record, we also provide the Customer with a claim check.

To Josh’s second question – “is there something we as passengers need to start doing (ensure we get a printed claim stub, and match to the itinerary)?” – the answer is yes. Again, this is an unusual situation, but I would recommend that we all learn from it and check to make sure that we have our baggage claim check in our possession before we leave the ticket counter (just as you would at the dry cleaners, the valet, or a coat check). I once left a backpack with my computer and many other valuables in a Las Vegas cab. When I called the cab companies to see if they had it, the first question that asked was “what was the cab number?” Of course, I had no idea. Amazingly, the backpack was returned to me in bubble wrap nearly a month later. Nevertheless, I’ve made a habit of always writing down my cab number now.

To Dan – I apologize if my comments in anyway gave you the impression that I thought Sophia was not being honest. I was familiar with the details of the case prior to the post running here and was aware that although we had neither the record or the claim ticket in this case, our search for the bag had not stopped.

Is it a bizarre coincidence that the bag was found shortly after this blog was posted? Yes. While I was thrilled that we located Sophia’s bag, naturally, I was embarrassed that we had not found it sooner and that the mistake was published on Chris’s blog for all to see.

Of course, we are not perfect, we do make mistakes, but when we’re wrong we say we’re wrong. In this case, we handled the situation to the best of our ability given the facts we had at the time, we ultimately found Sophia’s bag, and we have made efforts to do right by Sophia by providing her with compensation and travel credit.

Paula Berg
Southwest Airlines

@Paula

If SWA believed Sophia then why did it repeatedly deny her claim?

In reference to (On March 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm Paula Berg)

It’s really odd that someone at Southwest has miraculously found the missing bag, just a few hours after this issue was “made public” on this website. It would be very interesting to know how this bag was “found” and more importantly, how was it so hard for Southwest to even acknowledge the existence of the “missing” bag.

If anybody at Southwest has any interest in maintaining some level of public trust for your operations, I would suggest that they fess up what really happened. Also, this information may help others avoid the same problem.

Also, I’m really disappointed with Southwest and any other entities (not just travel related) that wait until a threat of a PR nightmare to do the right thing (like “finding” a piece of luggage that was officially “non-existent” until that day).

Hmm, I could’ve sworn there were other comments after Rob’s. What gives?