Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Grumpy McCrankleBags

Oh, hey! There you are! I bet you've been on the edge of your seats waiting to hear if our luggage made it home okay. And unfortunately I have to say that the answer is no. The courier arrived at our door late Wednesday afternoon with my bags. As I picked them up to tote them in the door I remarked to myself that they were ungodly heavy. Thinking it was just me being feak and weeble I stuck them in a corner until the Bub's nap time. Two hours later I get around to opening the bags. I pull out the first onsie and oddly enough it is wet. Hmmm, maybe it was from a diaper blowout that I had rinsed out and forgot about. But wait, this is wet too, and this as well. And my digital camera, it's wet too! WTF?!

I open the huge roller suitcase (all 44 lbs of it) and it is wet-top to bottom and front to back. This is not okay. The baby's sheepskin, soaked. My leather skirt, soaked and starting to mold! My wool scarves, my dry clean only skirt, my leather boots. Everything. Evidently our plane wasn't the only thing sitting on the tarmac during the thunderstorm. So my luggage got soaked sometime Monday afternoon and stayed that way until Wednesday evening. Fabulous.

I call United Airlines. I get the phone run around for an hour and a half. Evidently I have two totally unacceptable options. The first is to pack everything back in the suitcase and take it back to the airport, I live 3 hours from the airport. I have a three month old baby. I asked if they'd reimburse me for gas. Negative. The second option is to send the dry cleaning bill to United Airlines (dry clean my digi?!). There is no dry cleaners within 45 minutes of my house. (I kid you not!) I did make it over to lovely downtown Oakhurst in the next week, but alas, they don't clean leather.

During the entire phone debacle, I just really wanted someone to say "Your kidding! Your luggage is really soaked? We are so sorry. How can we make this right." Yeah, you can say I'm a dreamer. So I eventually got someone to cave and promise to send me $50 in travel vouchers. Not that I'll ever fly United again. But they are transferrable, so let me know if YOU want 'em! Now I know I should write a letter to customer service, but I can't get past "you suck and I hate you." So maybe I need a little distance.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You poor sweet kid! I am so sorry that your trip out to visit us ended with such a nightmare!

And yes, really...couldn't anyone say something nice and encouraging?

/nice

/encourage

GiGi Huntley said...

$50?! I'm pissed for you!

Anonymous said...

I also am sorry that my beloved United has turned into Geek Airlines! Now, as Grandma Lancaster would like you to remember, she wrote to the President of Buick after one not so nice encounter with the local dealer. The Pres responded with a nice apology letter and a check for the poorly done work! So, just you write that wet mess up and send it to the Pres of Geek, er United Airlines in Chicago. Make sure that you mention the "no one even apologized to me" part and let us know what happens. Just a para or 2 should do.
Love,

Dad

Kathleen said...

oh girl...i am so sorry.
jeez.
that really sucks.

sigh.

i am tempted to send the link this post to united and see what they say.

jerkees...