I got off the plane to discover my suitcase was damaged. What happened next was… weird.
RIP suitcase
Last Tuesday I arrived back at Birmingham Airport after a trip to Marrakesh with the family. Awaiting me was a sorry imitation of my suitcase. The logo and zips from the front compartment had been ripped off in transit.
Luckily, I don’t think there was anything in that front compartment barring a couple of pens and a spare notepad. The case, however, is unusable. And not many travellers realise what happens when your case becomes unusable.
Reporting a damaged suitcase
I didn’t report the damaged case at the airport, as I couldn’t spot the suitable place to do so. It was also late, and I had two fractious children on my hands.
If this happens to you, then the fun starts after you get home.
The first step, in my case, was to delve around the ‘contact us’ section on the Tui site until I found the luggage claims form.
After filling that in, I got an email asking me to fill in another form at Airlineluggageclaims.com. That asked for the baggage tag number, brand name, colour and cost. I couldn’t give the brand name, as the logo had been ripped off, while the cost was a guestimate based on luggage prices on Amazon.
I was also asked to upload some photos of the damaged case.
The bureaucracy of a broken zip
The response came the next day, ridiculously via a PDF letter that I needed to log into the Airlineluggageclaims site to see. Delightfully, things had now been passed onto a third company – Damagedluggage.com.
Tui’s letter advised me to use the online chat function, which I dutifully did. The online chat then pointed me to a page that I needed a verification code to access. Once there, there was another form to fill in, and another request for the same photos I’ve already sent.
They also needed the size of the case in centimetres. And the brand. And the value.
I decided to do some online hunting, and track down the exact make. It turns out it was the Skylark 4 Wheel Soft Premium XL Red, which sells for £69.99.
Once all of that was uploaded, it was back to the online chat. They’d looked over the claim, and now they wanted me to send a video of the non-existent zip. I can’t imagine that was the most fascinating or informative watch, but I sent it anyway.
My new suitcase
Surprisingly, the online chat agent then looked over the details and offered to send out a replacement case. It will be a Skyflite Continental XL, which is both bigger and more expensive than my broken case. The cheapest price I can find is £199 for a twin set.
Obviously, I am absolutely fine with this, but my mind boggles at the system that ends with this result.
Every human being involved in the process has been remarkably friendly and efficient. (It’s worth noting that I contacted Tui about two other problems with the trip, and got a genuinely interested and helpful call back from the director’s support team). But the process itself is borderline absurd.
Replacement vs compensation
From a customer perspective, all you want in this situation is for the airline/ tour operator to compensate for any lost items and give you the money to buy a replacement case. To have to send the same information to three different companies, with the accompanying website sign-ups, verifications and logins seems needlessly painstaking.
As for insisting on sending out a more expensive replacement case rather than just transferring the money, that just seems bizarrely counterproductive from a business point of view. An incident that essentially requires someone to go “fair enough, that case is buggered – here’s the money” ends up being double outsourced, with a needlessly expensive replacement being sent.
I’m not angry about the case – these things happen. I’m not upset about how I’ve been treated – it’s been broadly fair. I am, however, baffled by the process.
