Once again, a customer with a lost bag and an embedded AirTag makes United Airlines look foolish
United Airlines not only screwed up with a passenger's bag leaving it stranded at Chicago's O'Hare airport, but when the passenger explained that she had placed an Apple AirTag in the suitcase and knew its exact location, they responded as though she was talking gibberish. Let's get to the details per CNN. Sandra Shuster and her daughter were flying back home to Denver from Baltimore via Chicago. Shuster's daughter had participated in a lacrosse tournament in Baltimore where she played goalie.
United Airlines kept saying that the missing bag would be on the next flight and it wasn't
Their flight back home didn't touch the ground until midnight and the one bag that they had checked between them, which contained lacrosse gear valued at $2,000, did not land with them. And with the pair scheduled to fly to San Francisco two days later for another tournament, simply buying a new stick was not a solution since it would take a month to break it in the right way to be used during a game.
The AirTag had the exact location of the lost bag
As Sandra stated, "They said, 'Your bag’s going to come in later today on one of two flights.' I said 'OK, great,' but it never came. So I called later that afternoon and they said 'Your bag is still in Baltimore,'" says Shuster. But thanks to her Apple AirTag, she knew that the bag containing her daughter's lacrosse gear was not in Baltimore. The AirTag was showing that the bag was at the baggage reclaim center at O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
Shuster said, "I told them I could see it at Terminal 1 baggage reclaim in Chicago, and they said 'We have no record of it.' I asked them to call Chicago, and they said 'No, we’re not allowed.' They said they’d put notes in the system and the baggage team would take care of it."
Sandra's daughter borrowed equipment for the tournament in San Francisco and at the Denver airport after flying home, Sandra approached the lost luggage desk and repeated her tale of woe right down to mentioning how her AirTag knows exactly where the bag is located. But the United Airlines rep suggested that Shuster filed a claim for the missing bag and its contents. He told her that most people file for the missing bag, receive $1,000-$2,000 in compensation, and the bag shows up a few months later. He called it a "Win-win" for the family. But Sandra refused to do this.
Shuster said, "He was implying it could be a double win but I wasn’t trying to game the system – to replace what was in that bag was much harder." So Sandra used her reward miles to book a round trip to Chicago and back, informing United on Twitter (now known as X) that she would be coming to get her bag.
At first, the airline seemed ready to roll out the red carpet for her: "We’ve let our baggage team in ORD (O'Hare International Airport) know that you’ll be arriving. Thirty minutes later their tweet had a different tune, "We recommend that you remain in Denver while we continue to work through our processes to bring your bag back to you."
Shuster had to fly to Chicago herself to get the bag back
Not believing a word of what United was saying, Shuster explains what she did next. "So I jumped on the plane, flew to Chicago, got to baggage claim, and it took them 30 seconds to give me my bag," she says. "Meanwhile I’d already sent pictures of the bag, the claim ticket, and its location to United. It’s gobsmacking that they can’t figure out how to do it better in this day and age."
After flying to Chicago Shuster got the bag back in 30 seconds
In a statement, the airline said, "Unfortunately, this bag was incorrectly tagged at the start of the trip which contributed to the longer delay – we’ve apologized to Ms. Shuster, reimbursed the miles used, and gave her an additional travel credit to use toward a future flight. Our teams work to reconnect our customers with their baggage as quickly as possible and we regret that we could not get this bag to Denver sooner."
Chalk up another victory for the Apple AirTag. There are similarities between this story and the one we told you last month about an airline that failed to believe a customer whose missing bag was tracked down by his AirTag. The passenger was forced to buy another ticket just to get to the area of the airport where the AirTag had correctly located his bag which the airline sheepishly turned over to the passenger. The name of that airline? United.
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