SQ, a young Roman journalist, just had time to enjoy the return to the services as a sent abroad (after a year and a half of pandemic and forced sedentary lifestyle) and immediately saw her joy ruined not so much by the loss of a suitcase in airport – which can always happen – as well as the bureaucratic odyssey he had to face to get his baggage back; we cite your case because it indicates a general problem: the ancillary services of airlines and airports, such as the management of suitcases, are increasingly “outsourced”, that is, outsourced to external companies, which perhaps subcontract to third parties, and so in a hullabaloo of call centers that respond from Moldova and automatic replies via email that do not allow reply, the traveler finds himself consuming his anger without the possibility of venting. Since the question does not concern a single company or a single airport, we omit to mention the name of the air carrier (in any case, it is NOT Alitalia and not even a low cost one, but a renowned foreign operator) and of the airport, also to avoid (we confess) the ‘useless pantomime of the right of reply, which then ends with two bureaucratic lines that basically say: who has had has had and who has given has given. So let’s move on to the facts, as told in first person by SQ.
“Three days ago I returned from Sweden to Italy with three flights operated by XXXX. Once I landed, I received an email that I could not reply to, where I was briefly warned and without giving too much information that my suitcase in Stockholm (a stopover that kept me on the ground two hours before leaving) had not been loaded. At that point I go to the Lost & Found and – after almost an hour in a queue for three people in front of me – I manage to open the loss file. The following day I start looking for XXXX contact details to report the incident (pity that the number available not only invites you to speak to an English operator – and so far for me who know the language, ok – but the waits on the phone are interminable and without success). Worse still, the Lost & Found sends me back to a Moldovan switchboard, which tells me where the suitcase is left (what a discovery!). Hours go by, meanwhile I learn that the travel insurance that I had also taken out for the baggage, covers the expenses in case of not arriving exclusively on the outward journey (as if one only because he returned home had duplicates of everything). I also learn that the suitcase is recognized as lost and therefore it is refundable by the insurance only on the 21st day of the report (absurd). Hours go by and I get a call late in the evening from Lost & Found telling me that my suitcase has been there since the afternoon and that the following day, but not in the morning (“they would never speak”, I quote) but after lunch, by 5 pm, I would have received the baggage after calling the courier. Wait but nothing, I call the Lost & Found at 3 pm but the disc is already active and it starts saying that the service is available only by 5 pm (a joke?). So at 7 pm I go out and call the airport judicial police. I decide that the next day – because she is only operational until 8 pm – I would go to the airport to report the Lost & Found which was holding my luggage hostage and XXXX for having lost it and not boarded in Stockholm, and for not returning made the Customer care service in case of such serious facts really active. Only later do I finally receive the call from the courier who confesses to having received the luggage from Lost & Found no more than an hour before. I explain all my discomfort and, with great availability, the courier decides the round of deliveries to allow me to complete my work commitment. We meet at half past midnight at home a little while ago and the suitcase is sealed and undamaged. But there remains the bitterness for the wrongs suffered and for how much they are all indifferent without taking responsibility for their mistakes ».
There is no more appropriate and more effective lock than this.