Last month when my husband and I were on holiday in London, he had to make a quick trip to Mumbai on business for a few days. He flew out of London on the 22nd of December and was scheduled to come back to London via Frankfurt on Christmas morning.
On a gloomy Christmas morning, when my husband drove home after landing in the early hours at Heathrow, he realized that the pale blue micro fiber Samsonite suitcase that he had picked up from the side of the luggage carrousel did not belong to him .He had mistakenly picked up another passenger’s luggage which was identical to his brand new Samsonite with its black TSA certified number lock.
After making a quick call to Lufthansa’s customer service at Terminal 2, we went to the airport to return the wrong bag and retrieve the correct one. The motor ways were deserted and we arrived at Heathrow airport within an hour.
Once at the airport we used the designated airport phone to call Lufthansa’s baggage department and my husband was asked to come to the baggage counter through the security post located in Arrivals to return the bag. I was asked to wait outside while he completed the formalities and retrieved his bag.
To my surprise my wait was an exceedingly long one and finally when my husband emerged wheeling his suitcase, I asked him what had taken him so long. He then showed me his suitcase which had been damaged badly with the main zipper which had been ripped open and looked beyond repair. The clasp of the bag was also without the TSA number lock that he had used to lock his bag.
While he had been inside he had learned that his bag had not been transferred with him when he had transferred from flight from Mumbai onto his London flight that morning. In fact the bag had only just arrived on the latest flight from Frankfurt at 1pm.
He had then gone to the Lufthansa lost baggage counter and after some persuasion, he had gotten them to record the damage and give him a report. The agent apparently had offered a number of excuses to avoid taking responsibility for the damage. My husband had firmly stood his ground and had made them accept that the damage was valid and that he should be given a baggage damage report. He was told that due to the holidays there was no way that Lufthansa could repair the damage to the bag before the 2nd of January, the date of our scheduled departure.
The agent then suggested that he should approach the New York Lufthansa Baggage center and customer service on his return to New York City and that he should quote the damage report file reference to them. The Baggage counter agent at Heathrow also assured him that Lufthansa was exceptional at ensuring all damaged baggage reports were efficiently handled around the world.
The day after we arrived in the US on the 3rd of January my husband called the New York Lufthansa Baggage center and left a message with his file reference number.
He didn’t receive any response to his message. On the 7th of January ,he mailed them a letter with copies of his boarding pass, luggage identification tags and a copy of the damage report and yet again he didn’t receive a response.
Exasperated by the events on the 13th of January he sent a follow up email to the Lufthansa customer service site with all the relevant information and he even called the customer service center.
Finally on the 14th of January my husband received a call from Lufthansa customer service stating that they had received his email of the 13th but not his letter from the 7th of January and he was told to resend the letter by post as the department does not have a fax number for customers. On the 16th of January, he again mailed a copy of the letter he had first sent to the Lufthansa customer service center on the 7th of January.
As I write this post, the drama still continues, with us waiting to hear from Lufthansa. It sure seems a shabby way to treat a customer whose baggage has been damaged by an airline which is regarded as a premier airline in Europe and the world. If this is the kind of run around a premier airline gives a Business Class passenger, I shudder to think of the treatment Lufthansa will mete out to a passenger who travels in their economy cabin.
