Losing Your Luggage (and Your Mind)
19 Aug 2013When we got back from France, I mentioned, in passing, that Air France had kind of blown it with our luggage. I decided to wait a little bit to tell that story, mostly because a) I didn't want to jeopardize any refund we might get from the airline, and b) I didn't want to fly off the handle still pissed at the world. Enough time has passed that I figured I can relate the story coherently.
Sunday, the last day in Tuscany was a bit hectic. Getting from the villa to the train station wasn't as straight forward as we had hoped, but the train ride was nice and relaxing. We had plenty of time to get from the train station in Florence, via bus, to the Florence airport. My experience with the bus driver should have tipped me off that this would be a challenging trip.
Upon getting on the bus, the bus driver wouldn't give me change (even though he clearly had enough), and wanted an exact fare. Sadly, Katie had used a euro to use the bathroom, and we were one euro short. Thankfully, there was a very nice woman who gave me a euro so that we wouldn't have to get back off the bus, go into the terminal, get change, and then wait for the next bus.
After arriving at the airport, we made it to pick up our tickets, but both self-service terminals for Alitalia were broken, and there was no one at the service desk to give us our tickets. So, we grabbed some lunch. When we came back, there was a little bit of a line, but it moved quickly. The service agent was super nice, but was surprised when I asked her why she only flagged our luggage as heading to Amsterdam, and not to Paris. She replied that she didn't even know that we were booked to Paris. We straightened that out, got our tickets (with both legs being in business class!) and headed to our gate.
We waited at the gate for our flight to board. And waited a bit more. And a bit longer. When we finally got going, it became pretty clear that we were going to have a very tight connection. I started making mental plans for catching the first subsequent flight to Paris. As we landed, I said "Well, if our next flight is leaving from a gate within about 50 feet of this one, we might make it."
We got off the plane. The gate agent told us our flight was just two gates down.
Not bad.
Of course, we didn't have tickets for this flight yet—we had to get them re-issued. I ran around the terminal while Katie waited in line. Finally, we just got up to our gate and explained our situation, and they issued our tickets (once again, we snuck into an upgraded seat). If we made the tight connection, surely our bags did.
After about 30 minutes of waiting in Paris, it was clear that, surely, our bags did not.
Katie spoke enough French and the really nice Air France woman spoke enough English that we were quickly able to explain the situation and get some answers. Our bags were still in Amsterdam, they'd arrive tomorrow morning, and they would have them to us by noon. They provided us some toiletries, explained the reimbursement policy (100 Euros a day, per person, but save the receipts!)
We could wait one day, so we headed to our lodging.
About 3pm the next day, after following along online, I made the first of what would be many calls to the Air France baggage line. They had a lot of missing bags, weren't sure why anyone had told us it would be delivered by noon, and they'd let me know as soon as they found it. It would, most definitely, be soon. No big deal, we'd relaxed all day and could wash up a bit and go grab some dinner.
Late Monday night, they called and emailed to let me know they had our luggage and it was delivered to a courier. The courier would call in the morning and setup a time.
Tuesday morning, sure enough, the phone rang. The courier, who spoke little English told me, who speaks little French, that it would be delivered between 10am and 2pm. I only asked that they call my number, so I could meet them downstairs; we were staying in an apartment and did not have a doorman to collect the package. No problem.
2pm rolled by. At 3:30pm, I called and was told it was "traffic". At 4:30pm, I called again and was told it was "traffic". I told them, "That's funny, because your web site says you tried to deliver it, but I wasn't here. Which is clearly not true, because I've been talking to you all day."
I asked if they could redeliver it. Or if I could pay for the courier to bring it back. Nope. I could have them bring it back to the airport, or wait for the courier.
Now, at this point, I was a bit incredulous, but trying to hold my temper. What was I going to do? Screaming at the poor woman on the phone wouldn't get me anywhere. I asked that they find out how they didn't deliver it, if they could contact the courier, and how we could make sure we would get our luggage.
All told, I probably spent $50 on the phone back and forth with Air France and the courier. I was assured that the luggage would be delivered on Wednesday. I told them they were ruining our vacation.
You might ask, "why didn't you just go buy new clothing?" We did buy some, but spending a bunch of money on new clothes in Paris, in hopes that they'd reimburse me, doesn't sound fun to me. A better policy would simply be cutting me a check, or issuing us some sort of credit. That way, I wouldn't be on the hook for stuff I may not get paid back for. Anyway …
Katie's brother, living in Paris, agreed to hang out at our place, with my phone, and would wait for our luggage while we went and did some sightseeing. We once again got the 10am - 2pm window. These guys make the cable companies look good.
At 1:30ish, they called Katie's brother and delivered our luggage.
When leaving Paris, somehow, we got bumped up to business class again, priority boarding, the whole nine yards. I'm assuming that's due to the issues we had, which at least makes me feel like they were trying to make good. At home, I not only asked to be reimbursed for the clothing and toiletries that we bought, but also for the phone calls I made. Delta (who handle the domestic side for Air France) didn't bat an eyelash; we had the whole amount reimbursed.
I've tried to think about what I would have wanted to go differently, other than not having to deal with losing our luggage at all. I think the answer is really simple:
When you screw up, own it. Don't make it someone else's problem.
But outsourcing the delivery of the luggage and having zero control over the process, a poor delivery service made Air France look completely second rate. It would have cost them $100 to expedite the luggage, I imagine. Once the first delivery had failed, they should have called and had it delivered special. Had they done that, I wouldn't be talking about how bad their service was, I would be talking about how they went above and beyond.
Instead, I've told a number of people about our experience, I'll think twice before flying Air France again, and I will go out of my way to not check a bag through them.
It's not easy to be a big company and empower your service team to do the right thing. This seems like something that, unfortunately, happens often enough that they should have a protocol and empower their team to make it right. Instead, they made it someone else's problem (first, the delivery company; second, mine).
In the end, we still had a pretty great trip, lost luggage or not.
