Gone bad...
On her flight back to Germany during her year of study abroad, Lufthansa lost my daughter's bag. She thinks she may have seen her bag get stolen off the conveyor, but I am dubious. The Lufthansa baggage rep on site said it would be covered, said they are liable regardless of whether it was lost or stolen, took her claim, and directed her to make a police report, which she did. Jean Bari in Customer Relations emailed her earlier this week, saying they are now denying her claim. Because it was stolen after it hit the belt, she says, it's not their fault, even though Alyson never took possession of the bag. I say that's horse puckey - they can't say for sure that was her bag, and that it wasn't another legit passenger picking up a bag that looked like hers. Why would a thief pick a used duffel bag out of an array of expensive luggage from well-heeled international travelers? In any case, she gave them a bag she never got the chance to retrieve. She gave it Lufthansa. She never got it back. End of story.
The bag was full of all of our Christmas presents to her - mostly clothes, needed for winter. They dragged this out for weeks, made us gather up all of the receipts, and then denied her based on the police report their baggage agent advised her to file. Just as bad is the fact that they hide behind a wall of secrecy - the correspondence from Jean lists only a FAX number, and all of the email addresses involved in their correspondence are generic. I have responded to the email. They have not responded to me. It is obvious they want to make this as difficult as possible for the customer. Everything I can find about them on the web indicates this is their modus operandi. Now I have faxed a reply. I await a response.
Wrong. Just plain wrong.
I'm not giving up. Lufthansa denied the wrong claim here. I will continue to escalate my response (not here - don't worry Pete and Vicki) until they fulfill their agent's initial commitment to reimburse my daughter for her loss.