An airline said her bag was lost, her tracker said otherwise. She flew to get it | Hacker News Reader

An airline said her bag was lost, her tracker said otherwise. She flew to get it

cnn.com

171 pointsrntn189 comments

Lots of "customer support" is literally just lying people to get them off the phone and hope they give up. It's pretty clear that's what this is. They have no incentive to help, so they dont.

annnd "customer support" is usually someone working in a boiler room warehouse somewhere and paid low wages, so an even bigger incentive to not help.

It's not lying, it's ignorance or not having the time/resources/ability to find the correct or more helpful answer.

The individual service rep may not be lying, but the company is. They intentionally put someone in front of the customer without the correct information and without the ability to find it so that they will have no option but to follow a script without any regard to whether the words they are saying are true.

The company is "lying" in the sense that their computer system has the wrong information caused by a human error. And you can certainly argue that this should have been special cased sooner rather than later. (On the other hand, like it or not, I assume that a lost piece of luggage is also written off as unfindable well before mountains are moved to try to find this item which is apparently out of the computer system's knowing. I've certainly experienced something similar with deliveries from time to time.)

There are definitely lies in some of the interactions in the article itself. First saying that it is in the wrong place, then saying that "the baggage team will take care of it". Not to mention mistakes made and not admitted. Not to mention they told CNN the woman would get her money back for the travel, but not contacting her.

If you're talking about support in general, they don't say "I don't have the time/resources/ability to handle that". They instead flat out lie to you (how many times I got the "your cancellation was requested" only to be charged again), shift blame often back to customers, ask customers to re-do procedures because of their own mistakes, transfer to phones that often disconnect, or even refuse to perform support by some channels ("please fax this form for cancelling you account"). Not to mention transferring the call and then disconnecting you, very common with cable/telecom.

Often the individual person is not to blame, as they're following orders, but they're also not saying the real reason for the problems, so you can definitely say they're paid to lie.

All of this has a reason. It's rarely lack of time, though. Cancelling some subscription sometimes takes several unnecessary minutes, sometimes hours when you put together days. This time could have been used to do actual support.

I once had a package delivered to a small local post office. App said it arrived there, and the next day I went to pick it up. The guy there couldn't find it and did not allow me to search the pile of packages myself, because "he had a system for ordering them", and it was impossible that my package was in there.

When I called customer support, they were overly supportive and outraged. It was very suspicious and obviously feigned. The guy there said that he would contact the post office immediately and get back to me! No worries! My package would turn up soon, it was clear that it was delivered to the post office! He could understand my frustration and would get to the bottom of this! Etc.

Nothing happened. A few days later I had an idea and went to the post office again. The same guy was there, remembering my case. He still insisted that the package never arrived there. Nobody from customer support or package tracking had ever contacted him, and the package wasn't even marked as missing. When I asked him to check if he had placed it in his "system" not based on my name, but on the name of the sender, he condescendingly laughed it off. But sure enough, that was exactly what happened.

I ordered some stuff off Amazon many years ago, it never arrived. Contacted Amazon and they replaced my order. It arrived in about 1 week. 7 months later the original order arrived, box was beaten to hell. Dropped, torn, retaped multiple times.

Everything inside was intact and undamaged.

That's actually an amazing story.

I ordered some things some year ago, maybe 5-7 years ago now, and they never arrived. Amazon said they did, and they didn't reimburse me at all. I was pretty frustrated for quite some time about that, especially given my Amazon account goes back to 1996.

I did get invited to Vine about five months ago though, so I guess I can forgive them that $50 worth of stuff, given all the things I've ordered from Vine thus far.

I’ve only had to contact Amazon support twice in 20 years (my account is from 2003) both times they resolved the issue. But I’ve had friends who had terrible experiences with their support.

I just thought it was funny the package eventually showed up. I was very confused when it arrived.

I get the impression that post office staff quickly become jaded from being nagged about packages, especially by elderly people. After all, the elderly don’t have to work, so they can come to the post office every day and ask insistently for packages they know are on the way, but haven’t yet arrived. So, by the time you went there with your problem, any last bit of good customer service had been burnt out of the clerk.

Hopefully you're not saying this as an excuse or justification for runaway hubris and just awful customer support.

I’m saying it as a force of nature that one just has to deal with. I’ve observed it in many post offices across many countries.

All we can hope to do is to understand.

When someone deals day in and day out with abusive customers who are sure of things that are just flat wrong it has a predictable effect on the persons handling of legitimate cases.

It's not good, it's not just, but it's understandable. Armed with that understanding we can at least try to self-help by making ourselves look as little like the bad customers as we can. Should we have to? Not according to how things should be. But how things should be isn't what counts in the world, how things are is what matters. And at the end of the day-- do you want your package or not?

Grinning and bearing abusive customers is not the default state of the world, there are societies where abusive customers are not tolerated at all and thus very rare.

An elderly person coming to the post office every day to check for a package may be annoying to the people working there, but they should tolerate it. What's the alternative, chewing out the old person? That's cruel. Banning them from the post office? Unconscionable.

How does this relate to the practices of other societies?

> I get the impression that post office staff quickly become jaded from being nagged about packages, especially by elderly people. After all, the elderly don’t have to work, so they can come to the post office every day and ask insistently for packages they know are on the way, but haven’t yet arrived. So, by the time you went there with your problem, any last bit of good customer service had been burnt out of the clerk.

Yes I read the parent comment when I replied. How exactly do your comments relate to my prior comment?

I probably shouldn't have even said abusive in my post-- it's not actually the operative part. It's sufficient that the customers are frequently wrong.

I think I'd also say that abusive from the perspective of the recipient isn't a bright line and you'd be hard pressed to find a culture in the developed world where the misguided interactions don't begin to feel somewhat abusive to the recipient after dealing with them day after day.

Of course, there is also outright abuse that is tolerated in the US and probably ought not be which only makes the matters worse.

What exactly is the point your trying to say?

i'm curious now, can you tell me specifically which societies are immune to basically the human equivalent of a DDoS?

'Immune' and 'human equivalent of a DDoS' are pretty extreme conditions, far from what I had in mind, but even in that case there's at least one well known example, North Korea.

When I go to the post office it is filled with people shipping simple packages that could easily be handled by the machine directly next to the line, which I use then go drop off my package at the same counter.

So yeah. People are leeches and sheep and feel some odd need to interact on simple transactions.

I go back and forth on this, and feel similarly about self checkout. Is it better to streamline the process and lean on the technology, where staff can watch their jobs slip away, or is it better to chose the human where possible?

I like a later analysis of the Butlerian Jihad from Leto II of Dune (https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad) that says

> "I point out to you […] a lesson learned from past over-machined societies which you appear not to have learned. The devices themselves condition the users to employ each other the way they employ machines."

The more we use machines for these “easily handled” use cases, the more we tend to expect machine interfaces for more interactions, and at some levels, I think that’s dangerous.

The way I see it, using those machines is labor that people usually get paid for. I don't want to do that labor for free. Furthermore, the professional cashiers are faster at it than the general public. They make fewer errors and are empowered to correct more errors themselves instead of waiting for somebody else to walk over and clear the error. Furthermore, checkout and bagging can be done in parallel which is faster than doing both yourself.

The only upside to self-checkout is lower labor expenses for the store. That turns into profit for the shareholders, not savings for the customers, so I don't care about that. And I guess maybe some people don't like the social interaction implied by human cashiers, but if you're not in the mood for that you can just keep your eyes down and grunt or something. Cashiers are used to people who don't want small-talk, they can generally take a hint.

Are you in the USA? I ask because that is mainly where I see complaints about having to do the cashier’s work. And I think that has to do with how grocery shopping is done in the USA: people drive up in their cars and buy a huge amount of groceries at once, so there is a lot to scan. Moreover, sometimes the bagging had been historically done by paid staff, so people weren’t used to doing it themselves.

But as someone shopping in Europe, I have never felt using self-checkout burdensome, because I’m usually just getting a few items for that evening or the next couple of days. Using the touchscreen is pure muscle memory, and the advantage of being able to listen to headphones or avoid social interaction outweighs the very slight inconvenience of ringing up my own purchases. Moreover, the queues for self-checkout are always shorter now than for the human cashiers.

I am in the USA but my grocery store trips are not at all like you describe. I walk to the grocery store, collect groceries in a single basket and have them loaded into one or two bags which I walk home with. I do this 1 to 3 times a week.

No matter the quantity of groceries, a professional can ring it up faster than I can.

> Moreover, sometimes the bagging had been historically done by paid staff, so people weren’t used to doing it themselves

Sometimes, but usually there is something like a 1:5 ratio (or lower) of baggers to cashiers so bagging your own while the cashier rings you up has always been common. The way I see it, bagging isn't really a real job, usually the store hires mentally disabled people to do it as a sort of charity to the community (also the feds pay half of their wages.) Anyway, bagging is easy. I don't have to deal with an obtuse machine to put some stuff in a bag.

In most western countries, there's a high amount of unemployment for people who do relatively unskilled jobs. When people use he automated check-out in shops or the machines in the post office instead of the human worker, usually what happens is that either people are fired or contracts are not renewed as there's less need for human employees. This then directly leads to more unemployment for unskilled workers.

Since I'd rather those unskilled workers be actually doing a job [1] rather than my taxes paying for them to be on welfare while being disgruntled that they don't have a job, I purposefully do not use automated check out or do not use the machines.

Of course you can keep thinking that everyone who doesn't do the same thing you do are leeches or sheep and don't actually have a clear reason for why they do it but maybe try and learn to keep an open mind and be more empathetic about the world.

[1] Assuming the shops passes the savings of having automated checkouts to their customers, I would be paying slightly more to subsidize their salary (of course, I'm rather doubtful that the shops would pass on the savings)

I suspect that the amount of people using self-checkout expressly to avoid human interaction (one can listen to music or a podcast without interruption, or one is simply unsocial) exceeds those who are avoiding self-checkout for your idealistic reasons.

In my view, just bring on UBI already.

Oh absolutely agreed for the UBI. Unfortunately I don't see it happening anytime soon. But there's also a question I've always had about UBI. If someone works as a cashier let's say, it might not be an amazing job, but there's still some feeling of fulfillment of being part of society, of working, of getting to know regulars at the small supermarket you work at (for the smaller city sized grocery stores, not talking about the huge american superstores). Would having UBI but not having a job be fulfilling, would people feel excluded from society even if they have enough to have a decent enough standard of living?

And yes, I know, plus self checkout is generally faster especially since a lot of supermarkets now only have less checkout lanes. So, most people will chose convenience and avoiding human interactions over ideals. I just wanted to explain to the OP that is assumption that people who decide not to use automated checkouts or automated shipping label creation might not be because they are sheeps or leeches.

Your concerns about UBI are very dependent on the region and culture. In many countries, socializing at the supermarket is not common. Trying to strike up even a limited polite conversation would be a faux pas or worse.

But with regard to how to preserve social opportunities under UBI, I think the Nordic countries suggest the best approach. There in places of terminal unemployment where quite a lot of people are already on the dole, the state also offers a large amount of social and cultural infrastructure: libraries, concerts, clubhouses, etc. Sure, some people choose nevertheless to drink their lives away, but there are productive ways to spend one’s time. Conversely, I think things would be a lot tougher in countries like the US where everything is privatized and the decline of “third places” has been a trend already for decades now.

> Your concerns about UBI are very dependent on the region and culture. In many countries, socializing at the supermarket is not common.

I mean I've lived in a few countries, I've socialized with the cashier from the local supermarket in France after seeing the same person 20+ more times. I currently live in Hong Kong and after going often enough to some restaurants I've socialized with the waiters, chef, etc. Including becoming friend with the owner. I've done the same while living in Japan where I became good friend with a cashier at my local supermarket who was a student working part time and was invited to her wedding and became friends with restaurants owners too by coming often enough (I'd say Japan makes it easier than in other countries because people expect to meet other in small restaurants when sitting around the counter, see Midnight Diner on netflix for an example of that culture). I've also had similar experience in Malaysia, especially with street sellers. I feel that once you keep seeing the same faces repeatedly, over time you can start making a connexion. And at least that's held true in every countries I've lived in.

I haven't lived long enough in the US to say if that would work and I do think that it works better with walkable cities where local supermarkets/grocery stores in the center of the city are tiny...

> Would having UBI but not having a job be fulfilling

Probably not; the whole point of UBI is to make it easier for people to have and transition jobs (compared to means-tested welfare) and to survive when the the valie of their labor in the economy is low, not to eliminate work.

UBI is conceived to enable more people to work, at better jobs on average, than not having UBI (by not penalizing people for work the way means-tested welfare does, and by enabling voluntary transitional breaks from work for retraining or taking a temporary downgrade to get on a career path that doesn't dead end as soon, etc.)

So that if I wish to pay cash for shipping it's because I'm a leech and/or a sheep? I haven't used the machines since they went credit card only.

When I worked a low paying support job there were the coworkers that complained about the people coming in and there were the good coworkers and they rarely overlapped.

Same is true in retail or in this example imo - the worst employees are the ones that behave this way and rationalize their bad behavior.

This seems a bit ageist.

Did he at least apologize after that? Sometimes being embarrassed like that can turn a person nice, but sometimes not.

Hopefully in the future he gives you less of a problem.

Yes, he seemed ashamed and offered a (thin) apology.

That's a really horrible take on the employees - you should probably place the blame clearly on the company itself.

I worked at a phone company call center, back when landlines were more common (20+ years ago). I worked in an inbound call center, where everyone was late on their bill or already had service turned off. We literally didn't have the tools to help with a billing dispute, if that's what wound up causing the issue. We had limited ability to even discuss bills with customers.

Pretty much, we had the ability to help with their late phone bill.

And as frustrating as that is, I figure other companies are the same. It isn't "no incentive" to help, but they are probably stuck without any tools nor abilities to actually help. It isn't even lying, just a crappy way of running a company.

And it is very common. It does mean that it is easier to train folks: We already had a decent amount of training at that job, both classroom and non-classroom, but it was just enough to do our jobs and follow various state & federal laws.

No point in throwing the masses of low-level employees under a bus and crap on them when the likely culprit is corporate policy.

Lying and dishonesty is a personal matter, not one of corporate policy.

Sure, the corp can create incentives, but it's always the individual's fault if they choose to lie.

No it’s not. If the shitty company at your shitty job pays you to lie to people it is a matter of corporate policy. Of course the individual has some responsibility, but the corporation has more.

Would you lie if your boss told you to lie?

I mean, it depends? Is there a good reason? How bad is the lie? Who am I lying to? Am I at risk of being fired if I don’t? Do I really need the job or not so much?

Why? Do you never ever lie?

I think generally it’s better to never lie outside of a few rare corner cases (mostly around avoiding violence).

Those corner cases have basically never come up in my life (stuff like the SS coming to your door and asking if you’re hiding Jews).

Most of the times people justify their own lying they’re wrong to do so imo.

Does your boss even tell you explicitly to lie or just to calm and reassure the user and pass the info down to someone else?

Would you lie to your boss about if, you lied or not, according to directions

If your job is paying you to beat up pregnant women, would you still say that it was primarily on the corporation?

People are responsible for their own moral choices.

Is beating a pregnant woman the same as giving poor customer support?

What is the morality of working a customer support job to support yourself, if the company you work for gives poor customer support as a matter of policy/choice? Would that make you a bad person? If you do business with such a company, and make the mistake of calling for customer support, what would that say about you?

It depends, I guess? If someone was going around offering anyone $10m to beat up a pregnant woman, then yeah I’d say they are the main person to blame if a pregnant woman gets beat up as a result.

Again, that’s not to say that the person who did the beating isn’t also responsible.

You’re still responsible for your own actions. Sure, someone else may be complicit and share responsibility for coercing you or creating perverse incentives to motivate you to make a particular choice, but you still choose your actions.

> Lying and dishonesty is a personal matter, not one of corporate policy.

Would that this were true. Hundreds of UK sub-postmasters will tell you of their experience of extreme mistreatment based on the UK Post Office lying as a matter of corporate policy.

If only that were true.

My own incompetance in the call center was made up of two things: 1. Absolutely no training on the things in question 2. Absolutely no way for my corporate ID to allow access to details.

There weren't lies. Just things I couldn't do.

In some places, even if you can do something, you can't and keep your job. Sorry, but I'm gonna lie if it means my family eats that night. I expect you to do the same.

Many companies order their employees to lie.

The employees deserve to be thrown under the bus for this imo. I’ve done support work, if any of them gave a shit they could have helped her, but they didn’t.

Stuff like this suggests major cultural problems across the entire org (which includes employees like this). Probably major changes required to fix.

I agree with this take for this specific situation.

If they can check on the item location in a system, why can they not check the ground truth with another employee at the other location?

In most cases, the employees don't have a choice. They are told to do things in a certain way. If they try do do things any other way, they run into a brick wall. Just consider the whole bit about calling the other airport. When they finally found a manager who was willing to override policy, there was no answer. (Accuse them of lying if you want, but there is a good chance they were being honest.)

Oddly enough, it sounds like the run around was induced by software. Notice how they were intended to communicate by adding notes to a file. Presumably a system was put in place to manage the volume of requests they handle, only it didn't work properly or it isn't being used properly.

I don’t buy this - I’ve seen good support people solve problems despite system inadequacies.

The guy in this story who said “your AirTag may be there but that doesn’t mean your bag is there” is the opposite of that type.

Maybe they left a note in the file, probably they did nothing.

We have very little idea of how the conversations played out. Did the guy say that initially, or did he say that after being pressed after saying that they could not contact the other airport directly? The former suggests someone who does not want to solve the problem. The latter suggests that the customer had pressed on until they became the problem.

It is easy to attribute malice to someone when the solution seems to be obvious. It is easy to imply actions or inaction when you have no basis for it outside of a feeling that doing X will result in Y. It's more difficult to see the consequences of that obvious solution.

I spend a good part of some days tracking down and trying to resolve problems because of a combination of policies and software that sucks. Sometimes I make people incredibly happy because I accomplished something noone else could. Sometimes I leave people disappointed, not because their problems are unsolvable but because overstepping certain bounds will break things elsewhere. When I try placing myself in the airline's position, I'm seeing a situation with broken policies and procedures, but also of incredible consequences if circumventing thos policies and procedures was the norm.

In my experience, via corporate mandate, customer support is incentivized only to close tickets. If they happen to help someone along the way, it's pure coincidence. Customer service doesn't work for the people opening tickets, after all.

To recognize this is not throwing anyone under the bus or placing blame on specific people. To deride people pointing this out helps ensure nothing improves for those seeking help

> Lots of "customer support" is literally just lying people to get them off the phone and hope they give up.

How many people earn their living (it's their primary and only job full time job) in America doing this? How large is the "customer service" sector? How many of those people are happy having to deal with nothing but complaints every single day?

In fairness, this was something of an edge case where there was apparently a baggage tag mixup. The airlines' computerized systems have gotten much much better at tracking bags in real-time than the old days when a missing bag would pretty much require a very manual someone setting eyes on the bag process. (Which I've personally experienced.)

Today I can look at the United app to see where my bag is in the process. Of course, that does no good if the computer has the wrong info.

I do toss an AirTag into my luggage to give me some backup to the airline's system. I do understand some skepticism on the airline agent's part. On the other hand, if they genuinely can't find it, I'd expect them to act on the AirTag suggestion whatever their skepticism because they should realize something is amiss with their tracking system at that point. As far as I know, checked luggage thefts are very rare in the US.

So in the end, the customer finds that she is expendable. It's just so much easier to shift the blame, and it's not like anybody actually makes friends through good service in this anonymous world.

With no penalty for a low rate of failure, and insufficient incentive for people to be kind, failures like this are unavoidable.

One of the most striking understanding gaps in the modern world is that consumers still willingly believe they aren't interchangeable, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I had an order from Floyd (online furniture retailer) and on day of delivery the delivery company said the order was damaged and to contact Floyd for replacement.

Amazing run around where every week I would email Floyd customer support, they’d said they would order a replacement in a ‘few days’.

Six weeks of that and I submitted a complaint though BBB and I immediately got a reply that the items were now out of stock, and would be likely in stock in 6 months or so.

I ended up accepting the damaged items (at full price, no compensation) rather than wait so long.

A few years ago online-only startups distinguished themselves by providing better than brick-and-mortar customer service but I see this has flipped. I think this is what Cory Doctorow calls enshittification.

My ex incorporated for reasons I no longer recall, but is important at the climax of this story.

I helped her pick out a monitor, which was to be delivered by UPS. UPS receives it, moves it, and then nothing for days. For a week. She calls. They can’t find it. Thee weeks go by and we have escalated through recriminations. She wants a refund, but they don’t do refunds for lost goods (seriously? Wtf), unless, the employee mentions offhand, this is for a business account.

Aha. This monitor was bought for her business, which she intended to write off as an expense. So can I have my money now?

And then a miracle happens, suddenly they can find her monitor. A month after she ordered it her monitor shows up. The box is dirty as hell, but she finally got it.

Also fuck UPS. Several of my friends have thought I was joking about the UPS curse, and then they knew me longer and found out I am cursed (I joke that I must have dissed some manager and didn’t know it). The day Amazon stopped letting you pick your shipping service was a dark day.

> Amazon stopped letting you pick your shipping service

I never knew this was an option.

Given my problems with Yodel (in the UK before I emigrated) and DHL (in Berlin, after), I basically don’t even bother trying to get stuff on Amazon any more — it’s not only faster to go to a nearby store, but given the seemingly random choice of 4 delivery depos, it can also be more convenient because two of those four are further away than whichever shops are selling the things I’d tried to buy.

It was often just two choices, and if it was a regional thing I wouldn’t be surprised. And it might have been tied to urgency.

When I cared more about getting the thing that when exactly I’d get it, USPS was usually an option, and they know how to do their fucking jobs. I don’t know who ran the northwest division of UPS in the 00’s but they and all of their lieutenants should be shipped to Siberia.

The other way to get them to actually do anything quickly is if it’s an Apple shipment. They value that contract so much that they will bend over backwards for both you and Apple to get it resolved, like same day 1 hour the driver will unfuck whatever mistake he did. One year I worked UPS during peak season for extra cash, and the number of times I went searching for a missing Apple product during preload shift was astonishing.

The retailer is responsible for getting the product to you, not you, unless you contracted the shipping provider yourself. I don't know why you didn't just tell the seller to either get you the goods you paid for or refund the money?

How many lost products have you dealt with over the years? Things have gotten better, it a lot of it has to do with trillion dollar companies telling them what’s what.

None, but how is that relevant to what GP should have done?

Fedex and UPS do weird stuff when there is an exception.

My company made a mistake - we shipped a bunch of midsize laser printers to some new offices. They ship with a small onboarding kit (instructions and a small network “puck” that VPNs the devices to a specific network). With this particular model, which is new to us, that kit pushed the weight of the box to 76 lbs, 9 oz. The limit is 75lbs.

So we got an exception notice that it’s overweight and cannot be delivered as a result, so we can pay for return shipping or pick it up. Fine. Our bad, we’ll just rent a truck and pick them up. Turns out… when something is big to ship, they are shipped to be held in Texas, 3,000 miles away.

Long ago I read about cruise ship passengers sending their luggage via FeDEX to the ship. In that case it was to avoid airport workers pilfering the bottles of pills that many cruise ship passengers need for a long voyage. If I could, I would send my bags by almost any other means than "checking" the bag with the airline. Every other service has a legal obligation to deliver the goods, or at least try to get my bag to the destination, rather than pawn it off on a fly-by-night local delivery van service.

I had a choice last year to take a 4-hour flight via commercial airline, or an 8-hour flight in the back of a military transport. Everyone else opted for the 4-hour commercial flight. But for me, I would rather spend an extra four hours sleeping in the back of a C-130, sleeping literally on top of my luggage, than risk losing yet another bag to an airline.

Sending three boxes of t-shirts to Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, I found out that FedEx actually has an office in the hotel/resort. Fedex wouldn't deliver the boxes to my room for free (which I'd paid for, since I'd put my room number on the address form when shipping), and the office is actually about a half mile away down very long marble-tiled hallways.

The hotel wouldn't let me use one of their hand carts/trolleys (they had to be handled by their bell people), and they wouldn't go with me even for a substantial tip, because they had an agreement with FedEx.

FedEx charged me $150 to deliver the boxes to my room -- more than it'd cost to ship halfway across the country.

This was about ten years ago, so things might be different now.

> Fedex wouldn't deliver the boxes to my room for free (which I'd paid for, since I'd put my room number on the address form when shipping)

Ship a package to a specific apartment number and there's a 50/50 chance Fedex, UPS or any of the others will deliver it to the front desk / mailroom instead of to the door of that apartment.

For what it’s worth, delivering to the mailroom is typical for NYC doorman residential buildings and probably elsewhere in large buildings.

But those buildings also usually have a trolley and will loan it to you for free.

Yeah, I'm surprised the hotel wouldn't let you use the trolley yourself, every hotel I've ever been in has those trolleys available for any guest to use themselves. Maybe they had unionized bell hops and this policy was to protect their work? Really bizarre that they wouldn't do the work themselves for a heavy tip though.

If FedEx cannot guarantee they can do it then it shouldn't be advertised. Instead they should warn customers at the time of purchase when they won't be able to, or where there is additional cost.

Everything else is false advertising.

So you expect them to keep track of the rules for every building in the world and dynamically adjust at the time of shipment?

Sure, they could do this for buildings they have shipped to within x amount of days, and therefore know the policy. However, that would then leak information to those buildings out to potential thieves.

Yes, I expect they can manage a boolean per building and a notice to users when that's marked.

Thieves likely already know building delivery policies.

> So you expect them to keep track of the rules for every building in the world and dynamically adjust at the time of shipment?

Yeah, this sounds technically possible but wildly impractical.

Which means they shouldn't advertise a capability they know they don't have.

I don't think that letting you put a room or apartment number is the same thing as advertising that they will deliver to the door. By that same logic it would be false advertising to allow you to list a person's name, but not individually hand out packages to the correct people.

It's all the same company; Fedex accepted it for shipment in my state but charged me less than half of what they already knew they'd charge for me to pick it up. In fact, when I said I'd rather just have it returned to sender, they said they'd charge me for that, too (and actually more than the original shipment.)

> by that same logic it would be false advertising to allow you to list a person's name, but not individually hand out packages to the correct people

That's literally what you're paying for if you're shipping to an individual and not a company.

They knew the rules, because they'd set the rules and they were shipping to themselves.

The hotel and the on-site FedEx office both confirmed they had an agreement where FedEx would deliver 'last mile'.

In this case, however, FedEx was the "mailroom", so it can insert itself as a middleman into the convention center shipping.

The hotel and the on-site FedEx office (which was really rude to me) both confirmed they had an agreement where FedEx would deliver 'last mile' (probably literally).

And a bottle of water and large M&M's is $15 at Mandalay Bay.

I'm waiting for my plane to takeoff for Vegas now (weather delay). There's a 32 pack of water in my free checked bag for this reason.

I'm from Phoenix, everyone just carries a refillable water bottle here, I never leave home without it :)

I started using one most of the time this year, but I couldn't remember if bottle refill stations are prevalent on the strip.

The only nice thing I can say about Vegas is that I never had trouble walking up to a business from the sidewalk, asking for a cup of water and getting it for free. I think they didn't want me dropping dead from the heat right in front of them, that'd probably be bad for business.

Granted, that was 15 years ago and things may have changed. If I were made to go back, I'd bring one, maybe two, reusable water bottles and count on filling it myself in my hotel room.

Stock up at the Whole Foods on the strip near the airport! I pick up my car at LAS, stop at the Whole Foods (which also has amazon package delivery), and then drive to my hotel. There's also a Total Wines and a few good restaurants in that mall (Town Square); that and Spring Mountain Road (Chinatown) are the best things about visiting Las Vegas.

If anything changed, it's worse now. Any hotel which has an outsourced package delivery to an "in house business center run by (franchisee of ups/fedex) is generally going to be horrible for package delivery. I generally do Amazon locker (for Amazon), or pick up at a nearby non-hotel fedex/ups location instead, even if it requires taking an uber to it (although I have a rental car in almost all of these cases).

That's definitely what I'm going to do in the future.

Obviously, the real reason why they do this is so that FedEx can get in on that millions-upon-millions of dollars in convention center shipments (as you know, convention centers charge thousands of dollars for literally everything, even wifi or bottles of water.)

The first rule of flying with medication is that it goes in the carry-on, over everything else. If you can't fit so much as a book alongside your meds? Tough, meds have priority. In the US at least, the airline simply isn't allowed to make you check your medication, and the TSA is not allowed to confiscate prescription medication in its original container. OTC stuff, beyond what you need on the actual flight, should just be purchased at the destination.

FedEx in that context is probably because it has less trouble getting through customs, rather than for airline employees.

They don’t “confiscate” meds. They steal them.

I’ve never flew and got my bag back with the lock still on it (it was taken off and rummaged through). My wife has had underwear stolen. My kids gym shoes were stolen.

It’s like airlines require a criminal history for bag service.

Always take important or expensive stuff in carry on.

> It’s like airlines require a criminal history for bag service.

Well hey, they did their time and paid their debt to society right? Should they continue being unemployable for life, forced to return to a life of crime? Give those guys a second chance to earn an honest living and show the world they aren't defined by their past.

(Is it actually true that airlines hire people with criminal histories to handle luggage? I think they actually require clean background checks for those jobs, for obvious reasons, but such background checks are often the subject of the sort of criticism I just presented.)

What's more likely, stuff gets lost or kids forget to pack it, or this guy has gotten perv bag handlers that can sniff out women's underwear and children's gym shoes and stole them, risking their job in the process? If they weren't able to sniff them out, then they rummage through bags randomly as they are running down conveyor belts to find clothing items and shoes to steal.

For some seeing a trivially defeated security mechanism like a luggage lock is an invitation to defeat it. Doubly so if it's attached to expensive luggage...

"Well hey, they did their time and paid their debt to society right? Should they continue being unemployable for life, forced to return to a life of crime? Give those guys a second chance to earn an honest living and show the world they aren't defined by their past."

While this is true, it may be a good idea to employ them in jobs where it isn't tempting/super easy to get away with theft?

Roofers, plumbers, and the like have a lot harder time stealing things than airplane baggage handlers...

> They don’t “confiscate” meds. They steal them.

Which is why you put them in your carry-on: so that it is never in possession of the baggage handlers. The TSA employees at the security checkpoint won't generally steal things right in front of your face and under the cameras.

> Every other service has a legal obligation to deliver the goods, or at least try to get my bag to the destination, rather than pawn it off on a fly-by-night local delivery van service.

Isn't subcontracting to a locally delivery service trying to get your bag to its destination? Should we expect airlines to also run a last mile delivery service?

>> Should we expect airlines to also run a last mile delivery service?

Yes. They should be responsible for bags until delivery. If their subcontractor loses my bag I don't want to hear that the airline isn't responsible. The airline should know where my bag is and when it is expected to be delivered. I don't much care who actually drives the van, but they should be under the control and direction of the airline. Give it to USPS for all I care. At least USPS tracks packages.

>If I could, I would send my bags by almost any other means than "checking" the bag with the airline

On the other hand, I shipped luggage internationally once because I was doing outdoor stuff after a somewhat complicated business trip. It ended up stuck in customs and I'd have had to go there during the week to retrieve it, which because of the nature of the trip I was unable to do.

I try very hard not to check luggage but if you're doing certain types of activities, that's pretty much impossible to do.

In this case, I had an inkling in advance there might be a problem so I was careful to get as much critical stuff as possible either on me or in carry-on, I bought a bunch of stuff at a good outdoor store at the city I arrived in, and was able to borrow a few things.

ADDED: I'd just add that the airlines have a well-developed system that's usually pretty reliable about getting your bag to a carousel where you can pick it up. I'm less confident about FedEx or whoever getting it to you at a random hotel.

> If I could, I would send my bags by almost any other means than "checking" the bag with the airline.

I recently took my monitor with me to Spain, it’s a big 34 inch curved screen that I’ve had for about three years (I bought the monitor in my country in the beginning of 2020).

When I left Spain I sent the monitor home to my country. I used my girlfriends name as sender and her parents address in Spain as return address, in case anything happened causing it to be sent in return.

By accident they ended up marking the value of the package as €4000. I had told them it was worth about €400 which is probably more than I would even be able to actually sell the monitor for.

Anyway. The package arrives to my mother in my country. And she goes to get it.

The postal office told her to pay almost €1000 in toll fees.

I had originally paid about €700 for the monitor when it was new. And due to a mistake with the label they want more in toll fees for my three year old monitor than it had even cost when it was new.

I contacted the postal services customer support and explained the situation. They told me to submit proof of the value of the monitor and such, and that they will help me. Fortunately I originally bought it online and still have my login details for the store I bought it from, and from there I was able to grab screenshots of the original order.

This was on Friday. Hopefully they will be able to resolve it, so that my mother can get my monitor for me without crazy toll fees.

This experience has left me uncertain if I ever want to send anything valuable home by mail again. We will see how it plays out.

what would be the value of a monitor that is not working, regardless of the fact that its missing one or two easily replacable, but critical parts, that happen to be in easy reach?

You could probably claim it was only worth like €50 or something in that case.

I think I see what you are suggesting :p but I think it is better to not sabotage your own monitor before shipping it somewhere.

>>I would rather spend an extra four hours sleeping in the back of a C-130<<

i miss those days sometimes

There is no more comfortable flight than a bench made out of webbing, a lunch in a cardboard box, a pair of ear defenders, and absolutely zero in-flight announcements. Only words I heard the entire flight were: "Sir, wake up. We are on the ground now."

Highly recommend AirTags in checked luggage.

I flew United from USVI to NYC last Christmas, bag checked at the gate because I overpacked (wouldn’t fit in the overhead bin).

On arrival at NYC, the bag didn’t appear at baggage claim.

So, opened up the Find My app, and the AirTag was reporting my bag at an airport in Puerto Rico (bag was put on the wrong flight).

I showed this to the baggage desk at EWR, and they assured me it would arrive the next morning via fedex.

It didn’t arrive the next morning, but it did eventually arrive 5 days later.

The AirTag wasn’t helpful in retrieving the luggage, but it was very helpful at providing peace of mind re: where my luggage actually was without relying on United’s own tracking system which was useless.

Of course they only refund her when CNN contacts them. Just like that guy who wrote the song about United breaking his guitar, they didn’t do shit until it went viral

Which make you think, how many people are in the same situation, don't get viral, and get screwed in the end.

How likely would it be that you would win a trial in a small claims court?

Hello! I’m one of those unresolved United cases. When I played trumpet primarily, I had had a horn get destroyed from mishandling on the way to an audition. I didn’t get any compensation at all.

Many years ago I traveled for work and would fly on Mondays and either Thursdays or Fridays. On some weekends I would go back “home”, and others I would go elsewhere. I often had several weeks of flights booked to various places, but typically going back to my work site.

I prefer to check a bag if it’s larger than a backpack and was making nearly a hundred trips a year without issue. And then one day my bag didn’t show up. The airline finally did find it, but they had sent it to a destination I happened to be visiting the next week. When they offered to ship it back I asked them to keep it where it was and they were incredulous. I was more concerned about not having it for the next leg of my trip and didn’t want something to happen to it in the mean time. When I arrived, it was waiting for me unscathed.

This was long before it was cheap enough to track anything of moderate value, so it was a relief that the bag was found at all.

I'm always shocked bags can get "lost" at all.

They get those huge universal bar codes in multiple places, and then whisk away on the conveyor. I understand there would be mix ups, bags fall off, bags get jammed, bags get pulled off flights so airlines can put more expensive cargo on there. That's all fine, because none of those bags are "lost", they're just delayed or in the wrong place.

Surely whenever a bag is in an odd place someone can just scan it, and send it back on it's way. Other than bags actually getting stolen (is that really a HUGE problem?), I can't understand how any bags wouldn't eventually get to the correct destination.

1) Tags can get ripped off (nothing to left scan)

2) Bags can be mistagged in the first place (like in this article)

3) Bags can be misplaced/lost in a location nobody will ever scan again (e.g. sent to the wrong airport, unclaimed bags are all put in a room to be claimed but they never bother to re-scan because they assume they're already at the correct destination)

4) Bags can be misdelivered (e.g. they deliver your late bag to a totally wrong hotel)

And so forth. Also I don't know what bar code "in multiple places" you're talking about, I've only ever seen a single looped sticker around the handle. Are there airports that do something extra? Where?

Re multiple places: I've only flown in Europe in recent years, but all the looped stickers had like 3 smaller stickers on them which you could put directly on the luggage. I think it's the small ones you can see here, near to the right hand of the person: [1]. When checking in at a desk, they don't always bother to put them on the luggage, but when I'm at a machine, I always make sure to use them.

[1]: https://www.airport-technology.com/products/self-adhesive-ta...]

Ha, I've always wondered what those were intended for. Because you're right, whenever I've checked in at a desk, I've never once had them bother to actually stick them on my luggage. Thanks.

> 2) Bags can be mistagged in the first place (like in this article)

This I dont get. They pull your file and check your ID, then print the baggage tag and attach it to your file - or have YOU print it. How can they mistag? The process seems sufficiently straight forward that, short of sending you to the wrong direction as well, your baggage should always have the right tag?

You've never seen two people's sets of baggage right next to each other at the check-in counter, and the attendant puts the tag on the wrong one?

Check-in counters are busy places where printers break and attendants switch between desks and luggage gets put somewhere for a minute and attendants are multitasking because in the middle of checking you in, there's an urgent situation with another passenger, and now the other printer broke too -- "well I assume this tag was meant for this bag, I've gotta keep the line moving".

Like many other posters here, whenever we travel, I put AirTags in all our checked bags as well as hand carry (in case we lose them or they get stolen).

I also made my own sturdy luggage tags with a laminator that has our contact info on it. For each flight, I print a sticky label with the dates, airlines and flight numbers and attach it to the tag. Then, if the airline label ever gets ripped off, there is at least, some way to identify it.

So far so good even after 100 or so trips. My family chuckles about it when we’re packing but I think deep down, they understand it might one day save a trip.

We also have these reusable stretchy nylon covers for the checked baggage. As well as protecting the cases and making them easier to identify (neon colors), I’d like to think that makes opening them less attractive to airline baggage thieves than all the other ones but who knows.

Key detail:

> In fact, they were right – sort of. The claim number was indeed the same as the tag that had been attached to her bag – but the check-in agent had attached the wrong tag. This one was for another passenger, who was traveling from Baltimore to Chicago only. That meant the bag had been taken off the plane at O’Hare and sent straight to the reclaim belt, instead of being loaded onto the Denver flight.

That reminds me of a story when my father and I were traveling in Hawaii many years ago (~1985) where we were given the wrong boarding pass from a different traveler and apparently only one so one of us could not board the plane. We went back to the ticket desk to protest, but the agent would not help us. We then marched back to the plane and the guy checking boarding passes said, "OK, I'll let you folks through".

I overheard the passengers next to me at the desk - as they walked away the guy said “wait this is the wrong ticket” - turned out there were TWO people on the flight with almost identical names - I think middle initial was different.

I don’t want to sound like a victim blamer, but not reading that the bag is “checked through” to the final destination seems to be part of the problem

In my experience, they only inform you if you need to pick up your luggage in between. Otherwise, you can assume you pick up at the final destination. You can ask for additional confirmation if you want, but the onus to double check shouldn’t be on the customer.

> The claim number was indeed the same as the tag that had been attached to her bag – but the check-in agent had attached the wrong tag. This one was for another passenger, who was traveling from Baltimore to Chicago only. That meant the bag had been taken off the plane at O’Hare and sent straight to the reclaim belt, instead of being loaded onto the Denver flight.

This is the reason I always supervise the check in agent very carefully when checking luggage, and always insist on both photographing the tag actually placed on my bag, and also affixing those little extra code tags to two opposing ends of my bag and making sure they are firmly attached.

I admire the persistence.

I recently had to recover a bag that arrived at the destination without the passenger (a family member had a medical emergency in the airport at the gate).

The normal customer service channels told me they couldn't help without the tag number of the checked bag, which we didn't have.

I called the destination airport, which was very small, directly. It was late at night local time. They transferred me to security, where someone on duty heard the explanation and after some very basic proof the airport fedexed it back to me.

It was very satisfying. I'm sure some protocols weren't followed to get the bag back, but we were very grateful.

I can't believe I'm rising to United's defense, but they generally do have good bag tracking in the United app. We've had two instances of misrouted luggage on a domestic flight; we found it in the app, they had already detected it as an error, and they hand-delivered it the next day, the first time to the hotel (missing poster for a presentation), the second time to our house (regular luggage). Worth noting for full disclosure that we're Star Alliance Gold.

On the other hand, all that assumes they tagged the bag correctly, which the gate agent didn't do here, so that goes out the window.

Once upon a time, taking a flight was a luxurious adventure - then came deregulation and the race to the bottom ensued (1).

1.) https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/airline-deregul...

Regulations can be bad, but they can also be good. Maybe the pendulum can start swinging back the other way to find the right balance between accessibility to all who need it and flying cesspools.

>Regulations can be bad, but they can also be good. Maybe the pendulum can start swinging back the other way to find the right balance between accessibility to all who need it and flying cesspools.

What relevant regulations would have helped in this case? Airlines are already liable for expenses that you incur as a result of lost/delayed baggage. Do we need to the DOT to mandate that gate agents double-check baggage tags before they're attached?

[1] https://www.transportation.gov/lost-delayed-or-damaged-bagga...

It's a secondary effect. De-regulation of flight costs and routes cause airlines to cut as much "percieved unnecessary" expenses to maximize profit to the point of where they are now - bare bones staffing, ancient IT infrastructure, paying for luggage or even in-flight bathroom use! (1)), negligiable accountability for dropped flights, etc.. These cuts lead to the inability to handle simple and quick tracking of misplaced luggage.

1.) https://aviationsourcenews.com/news/charging-passengers-to-u...

Unless you want to pay many thousands of additional dollars for airfare, you probably appreciate deregulation more than you think you do.

That said, keeping better track of luggage is a specific issue that arguably should be regulated.

I usually despise airline service, but on my recent vacation, one of our checked bags got left behind at a connecting airport. I was ready to have a ruined vacation, but the baggage clerk was extremely nice and professional. She found our bag, got our address and had it delivered the next morning before I was done with breakfast. We got some extra miles added to our account too.

Now it would have been better if they hadn't misplaced our bag, but shit happens, and how you deal with it is a sign of how competent your systems are.

Yeah just as a counter-example to the horror stories I only really had a misdirected bag once in ~40 years of flying and Swiss who misdirected gave me a good bit of money for new gear and delivered the bag to my hotel the next day. Maybe it's different in Europe? I daresay I normally travel hand baggage only.

Whenever possible, verify your name and destination are correct on the tag and watch the agent attach it to your bag. Tons of bag messes come from tags getting put on the wrong bag.

> Tons of bag messes come from tags getting put on the wrong bag.

How could that possibly happen? Usually the check-in agent would print your boarding pass, then the bag tag, and then they'd peel part of the tag and stick it to your boarding pass. The rest of the tag goes on the bag itself, on the sides and around the handle.

At least looking at how they do it, this exact kind of mess-up feels nearly impossible. But idk, maybe US airports do these things differently.

Happened to me with a game I had preordered (Wing Commander 3, showing my age here). Thinking back, I figure it's a case of "One of the workers there wants to take it home himself instead", as it was supposed to arrive the last day of shops being open before Christmas.

I was told "it's not here". I went into the back to look for it myself, found it, then I was told "OK, but now I can't sell it to you, because you went into the back without permission".

I said OK, I already paid for it last week, here's the fiscal receipt, and walked off.

These things happen. The problems occur when a system is incapable of self-correcting.

that happened with a major post office near me, except it was about two dozen people, that wanted thier mail and packages.

Pro-tip: You can reach the baggage offices by calling the airport and asking them to connect you.

Are there any non-Apple equivalent of AirTags?

Definitely admire this girl's persistence. And shame on United for handling this so poorly.

Chipolo's ONE Spot if you want it to work with the Apple Find My network or ONE Point if you want it to work with Android Find My Device.

The ONE Spot is iPhone only fyi to those who are curious if there is a way to get acess to Apple's mesh on Android

There are plenty of alternatives. But without Apple’s moat of high iPhone adoption, they aren’t very useful.

Tile works with all phones, Android and iOS

Just installed the Tile app: doesn't run on Android. I have Play Services installed (stock Samsung firmware) but it complains that something is wrong with the Play Services and the only option is to close the app. Based on the layout, the pop-up is from Google Play themselves and the app (prompting me to log in) would work fine if I could just click that pop-up away like one could on the web.

So it doesn't run on any Android, it runs on Google Play Services (not all androids have this), and for some reason not on my device despite having the google backdoor services installed exactly to avoid this sort of shit

Does Tile work with iPad Air? It’s not listed on their support page. https://support.thetileapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/200424778-T...

Not really, nobody has the mesh network that Apple does. Biggest copmetitors like Tile just simply do not work as well

Google's copy is coming out "soon" [1], though the launch has been recently pushed back[2].

[1] https://www.techradar.com/phones/android/androids-answer-to-... [2]: https://www.phonearena.com/news/find-my-device-network-setti...

I’m 100% buying some AirTags before I travel next time. And double checking the tag they put on my luggage!

AirTags only work with an iCloud account and Apple ID. To get such you need to provide a telephone number, which is linked to your real-world identity, allowing Apple and the US federal police to track your ID-linked tag whereabouts in real-time without a warrant.

AirTag data is encrypted with a key that resides only on your devices. It cannot be decrypted by Apple.

That's what they say about iMessage, too, but then the devices back up the endpoint keys to Apple in the iCloud Backup (non-e2ee and readable by Apple/FBI).

The AirTag keys are supposedly stored in iCloud Keychain (which unlike nudes sent via iMessage, is actually excluded from the non-e2ee iCloud Backup) but it's been a long time since I have read the security architecture document for how the offline Find My system works.

The issue with "the data is encrypted" is that a) the receiving device isn't yours (it's some random person's iPhone) and if it's totally opaque to Apple, how do they know to provide that encrypted data provided by some random airport iPhone to your specific account so that you can decrypt it?

It seems sort of handwavey to me. I remain unconvinced that Apple is that diligent about maintaining lack of location tracking for iCloud to AirTag mappings given that 99.99%-ish of iCloud users are already providing location to Apple a hundred other times a day (maps, ads, app store, music, books, TV+, etc).

> “you need to provide a telephone number, which is linked to your real-world identity”

What country do you live in? I can go to my local supermarket and buy dozens of pre-paid SIM cards with pocket change.

If you’re somehow associating your literal identity to a phone number, it sounds like you must be in a pretty heavy surveillance state.

Additionally, if you’re worried about being tracked, I hope you don’t carry a phone whatsoever.

Am I the only one that finds it odd bus travel offers a 10x better customer service and overall experience?

If you go anywhere by bus, it leaves on time, they don't lose your stuff, if there's an issue there's someone to talk to. shouldn't flying be a bit of a step up?

This is going to sound crazy, but I think air travel has become too cheap. The price wars between airlines has made the margins so thin they have to cut every single corner and pay terrible wages to employees that have no interest in helping you.

Maybe it should be a little more expensive and better quality. Its gotten so bad I think I'd rather take two normal flights per year instead of 3 cheap but traumatic ones.

Yes, it might be just you.

Buses are frequently hours late and break down mid-journey. And not only is customer service on the phone often non-existent (what do you expect for your $23 ticket?), but the bus station itself doesn't even have any employees to talk to -- the only actual person involved is the driver, whenever they show up.

Obviously it depends on the company/country, but this is the case for budget long-distance buses in the US. Obviously if you're booking an expensive luxury overnight sleeper in a city that has those, it's different.

FlixBus in Europe has been great IME

I can fly from Vancouver to Toronto in about 5 hours.

The same trip via bus would take about four days via the USA, or a week if you take the longer route through Canada. All day, every day, sitting on a fucking bus watching the telephone poles go by, hoping you never get a flat tire or a fender bender.

That is not a "10x overall better experience".

I took an overnight bus through Finland as a student. Never again. Less leg space than the cheapest airline, no awesome view like you get from flying, no toilet as I recall (so no reason to get up and stretch legs either), and didn't sleep for a moment. Six hours of boredom while being dead tired and needing to stay seated upright. After arriving, the day consisted of bone-chilling cold strolling through a city while dead on my feet.

Flying is approximately 850km/h as the crow flies compared to the 100 that a bus does across defined roads. If the bus ride is more than three hours and there are no other options like a train, all else being equal, probably I'd opt for wasting more time with airport stuff (getting there and back, waiting an hour on the airport and 30 minutes in the boarding line because they require you to be unnecessarily early) and cause more greenhouse emissions to avoid the disaster that is overnight busses

> no toilet as I recall (so no reason to get up and stretch legs either)

Uh people definitely just pace on flights. As long as you slowly and calmly walk up and down an aisle nobody is going to bat an eye.

I meant in the bus

I used to catch the bus instead of flights, but it’s just not worth the few dollars saved.

People stink. People eat hot stinky food. Oh, and there’s only one toilet here and we’re only stopping for a few minutes. Oh and this stop doesn’t have food options suitable for my dietary needs.

A 12 hour bus trip vs a 1 hour flight?

I’ll always take the flight now.

Are there any good alternatives to Air tags? I have an iPad but I am looking for something cheaper and that is avaialable in India. The stuff on Amazon I find has bad reviews.

Tile is the main reputable competitor I know of. It’s around 2000-4000 rupees on Amazon.in, depending on the model.

Edit: btw, I don’t have any experience with tile myself, just saying they’re widely known.

I mean, it requires a global surveillance network tuned to the frequency of your tag. No need to read reviews for individual tag products if you can just check the market share of trackers in your target region

I once filed a claim with United for an item stolen out of my bag. They had an email address for receiving documents, but a policy to refuse to provide status updates by email. Status updates required a phone call. It seemed to be the same people answering both.

I'm having trouble imagining a reason for such a policy. If it was structured to make filing the claim harder in the first place, it would be evil, but at least rational. Incompetence seems more likely.

I have been traveling a lot and have had good luck with the following tips:

1. Carry on size pack like an Osprey Farpoint 40L and packing cubes. It's incredible how much clothing you can actually fit on. Hard to lose a carry-on. Obviously doesn't work for this story but should work for most travelers.

2. Less sure about this, but putting stuff in cardboard boxes. Seriously. You go through the oversized baggage route where it's hand-carried on and off the plane.

Cardboard boxes (for anything other than a bicycle or other sporting equipment) are widely seen by airlines as an unsuitable form of packing. You may be able to check a cardboard box in only by signing a liability waiver.

I fly with my bicycle at least four times a year, and about half the time my cardboard box has been gashed open by the time I collect it at the destination. Everything inside the bike box has to be tied together so that nothing falls out. I definitely wouldn’t trust a cardboard box for ordinary luggage.

It's interesting that the check-in agent was the one that attached the tag. I recently flew Melbourne to Frankfurt, and there was no interaction with staff at all during check-in and going through security, it was all DIY tagging and putting it on the conveyor. Similar story coming back via Heathrow airport.

Wonder if it's just Australia and Europe automating it and whether it actually helps lower lost bag numbers.

This is why I insist on only taking hand luggage and never letting it be tagged on the flight for checked in luggage - which airlines sometimes do because they claim there's not enough space in the overhead cabins. I've always ripped the tags off and always found there to be enough space (while being one of the last to board).

FWIW,I've had at least a thousand flights over the last 15 years with at least a bag (and many times two) checked and have had one delayed until the next flight about 5 times, but none ever lost.

Where are you flying? I've never lost a bag outright but I've had bags delayed by days or weeks on maybe 5% of flights. I tend to go to places off the beaten path though.

If at all possible I use carry on only.

> Where are you flying?

99% of that has been within the US, and about 2/3rds of that up and down the Western US.

> If at all possible I use carry on only.

I can work nearly anywhere thanks to WFH, but that also means I have a lot of hardware to drag along many times, too.

> but the check-in agent had attached the wrong tag

How is that even possible? They either print the tag in front of you, or have you print it on the self check-in stands, then your baggage goes. Do they keep a stack of tags to lose the baggage on purpose?

It's possible they printed the wrong tag and no one noticed in the moment, no?

> but the check-in agent had attached the wrong tag. This one was for another passenger, who was traveling from Baltimore to Chicago only.

So what?

It’s not the customer’s fault that someone acting on behalf of the company made a mistake. That’s the company’s problem.

This has become so frequent that I wonder if there’s an opportunity in creating an independent bag retrieval service if you know where your bag is and just need someone to go get it and ship it to you. Some kind of gig based thing.

> “I understand outsourcing, but there are real inefficiencies here.” says Shuster, baffled that nobody realized that the passenger was actually saving them time and effort.

What else do you expect from the airline that breaks guitars[0]?

[0]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Has anyone pointed out that, if customers can put a tracking device on their bag, so could the airline?

In fact, it could be a part of the bag. The airline just reads it when you check in.

The airline slaps a barcode sticker on the bag, what's the difference?

Barcode stickers only work when they are scanned. The difference here is that bluetooth tags are automatically and continuously scanned by things in their environment.

Though if the issue is "they put the wrong tag on it" (which sounds like the issue here) that's not going to solve anything.

I would presume that if a bag passes a scanner, and the tag is folded over itself or not visible for some reason, and no barcode is detected, it would get shunted to somewhere for manual scanning. Maybe that's assuming too much.

I guess the tag could get torn off entirely, but they seem pretty tough. I've never been able to just tear one off, they have to be cut off with scisors.

The airline basically does put a tracking device on the bag, in the form of a tag with a barcode and (in some cases) RFID. Having the barcode built into the bag itself wouldn't change anything, there's still things that can go wrong where it gets disabled or, as happened in this case, the airline employee attaches a bag to the wrong customer. Having the standard system use an Airtag-like tracking device that requires batteries seems like it would be strictly more likely to fail than what they do today.

Wrong. Obviously a Bluetooth tag does deliver some value or customers wouldn't be doing it.

Of course airlines don't care what YOU want, because they don't have to.

The primary value it delivers is to give the customer direct access to that information, without going through the airline in any way.

That delivers no value whatsoever to the airline, so there's no reason they would do it.

Maybe you've heard of "competition"?

I'd add here that "tracking numbers" on your package are now standard. Who did that first? Why did the others follow?

Airlines compete on price and availability, not service. "We won't lose your luggage" isn't a big advertising claim. Unfortunately.

United gave the good ole, apology non apology like corporations do when they fuck up.

‘we know this has been frustrating and making you anxious.’

Maybe if they made the printed claim and bag stickers random, matching colors, this mixup would be less likely to occur.

I read the company name is United and I am thinking "but of course it's United, who else".

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