Inspired by my friend Lauren's epic battle to be reunited with her lost baggage, I'm adding a new feature to paynoattention.net, "Where in the World Is Lauren's Luggage?", to celebrate and document Lauren's increasingly desperate and preposterous struggle with British Airways and its employees (or as Lauren prefers to call them, the "cabbage heads") to regain her bag.
For Lauren's sake, I hope this is not a long-lived feature, but unfortunately, thanks to British Airways, it could be around for years to come. If this feature doesn't convince you to stop checking luggage, nothing will.
Here's the story. Three weeks ago, Lauren flew to Paris to run the Paris Marathon. She then flew from Paris to London for a couple of days to do some business and meet up with some friends, and made the mistake of flying into Heathrow. Alas, her luggage, which included a laptop, some nice jewelry, a new pair of Parisian shoes, and several jars of delicious French mustard, never joined her. Lauren did have the cold comfort of knowing that her bag had plenty of new friends: British Airways had somehow succeeded in losing 20,000 bags at that particular Heathrow terminal that day.
When Lauren left London two or three days later, her luggage was still AWOL. Before leaving London, Lauren informed British Airways that she was flying back to New York, and therefore, her luggage should be sent to her New York apartment instead of her hotel in London. Alas, British Airways ignored this request and sent the luggage by courier to the London hotel. After much exasperated long-distance dialing and attempts to get past the utterly useless automated message system, Lauren succeeded in getting British Airways to send a courier to the hotel to pick up her luggage and fetch it back to Heathrow, whence, of course, it should have proceeded to New York. The hotel and British Airways confirm that the courier service did in fact pick up the bag from the hotel.
Alas, however, that's the last that anyone will admit to seeing Lauren's luggage.
Never one to surrender, Lauren has called British Airways every single day over this past three weeks to inquire about the whereabouts of her luggage. Although Lauren is normally a woman with a laid-back California temperament and considerable savoir faire, she has, by her own account, occasionally been reduced to ranting and shrieking at the Cabbage Heads at British Airways. Before you judge Lauren harshly for this, be aware that numerous Cabbage Heads have told Lauren various contradicting fairy tales regarding the whereabouts of her bag, have informed her that they "have no way of contacting" the courier company that handled the bag, and made numerous unkept promises regarding the bag. However, British Airways still won't admit that it has absolutely no idea where the bag is, although that is manifestly the case.
I regret to say that it is my belief that Lauren will never see her luggage again. I'm particularly sorry about this because I had hoped to partake in the mustard.
Lauren seems to have a new and ridiculous British Airways story every day. I've asked her to keep me informed going forward, and I in turn will keep you informed, dear readers. And with every update, I shall include at least one valuable travel tip to help you avoid or meliorate a situation like Lauren's.
Today's travel tips: Avoid British Airways! Don't fly through Heathrow! And don't check luggage! Coming tomorrow, travel tips if you are unable to avoid doing any of those things.
