Express luggage-any bad experiences

[california7]

It sounds great. The concern I have is, you do not see your luggage get off the ship and to the airport. Has anyone arrived at their final destination and the luggage was not there? If for some reason it isnt there, what would you do?

 

We had luggage lost twice on planes and my husband is going to be hesitant doing this. I think it is great, i jsust need to convince him.

Any help is appreciated.

[YXU AC*SE]

You might wish to read this thread: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1148767

 

I love the convenience factor, however, being a bit of a control freak, and seeing bags mis-tagged as often as I do as a business traveller, I would want to see my bags have been been correctly tagged by the airline to my final destination. Using Baggage Express type services, you relinquish that control -- although 99% (or more) of the time nothing happens.

 

Scott.

[AZjohn]

I used it once post cruise from Vancouver. Nice service, and I really could care less if it showed up at home at the airport or not. Worse case they could deliver it to my house or pay me a bunch of money for dirty clothes…

[jetexpress]

You might wish to read this thread: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1148767

 

I love the convenience factor, however, being a bit of a control freak, and seeing bags mis-tagged as often as I do as a business traveller, I would want to see my bags have been been correctly tagged by the airline to my final destination. Using Baggage Express type services, you relinquish that control -- although 99% (or more) of the time nothing happens.

 

Scott.

 

99% of bags checked at the airport also make it to the correct destination.

[YXU AC*SE]

99% of bags checked at the airport also make it to the correct destination.

 

Agreed -- in fact it's even higher than that ... for January 2010 it was 4.62 reports of mishandled baggage per 1,000 passengers per DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

 

The point I am trying to make is that one trades off the ability for one to physically see that the correct bag tag has been applied to your bag for convenience. To give an example, a lot of AC's stations, whom I primarily fly (a lot), have shared printers between two check-in positions, where I have on occasion (usually once or twice a year) been given someone else's BP and/or stopped the CS agent from putting someone else's bag tag on my bag. Mistakes can and do happen.

 

If you are comfortable doing that -- cool -- but in the case of the poster in the link I provided, her bag was mis-tagged as someone else's, and she received (in error) someone else's bag tagged as hers; which only complicates tracking, and can make repatriation of the bag to its rightful owner that much more difficult.

 

But as previously stated, I am a bit of a control freak! :D

 

Scott.

[wrp96]

Scott, you're missing the fact that with the express luggage you are actually the one attaching the luggage tags to your bag, so you have the opportunity to check and make sure they are tagged to the correct destination.

[CFD130]

Just off the Caribbean Princess in San Jaun-Did the express check out and it was great-Had to do it early in the week-The last night we received our boarding passses and the tag for our bags-You dont get the colored ones or whatever your cruise line uses-You get the actual bag tag that the airline person at the counter would put on. So you can make sure that your airport code is on it- We had to pick our bags up just off the ship like always and take them through customs but then just past the customs, they were waiting to take our bags-never to be seen again until we got home. I dont know if this happens all the time or not because this was our first time with the express thing, but all of the express people were grouped together, we were one of the first off the ship-the first to leave the pier-first at the airport where we bypassed the check in-breezed through the USDA and off to the gate. Very definatly worth the extra money.:)

[california7]

So in San Juan it sounds like you have to go through customs with your bags and see your luggage go to the airport.

 

can anyone let me know what the process is at the Miami port. we are on the liberty

[KAYEF]

- We had to pick our bags up just off the ship like always and take them through customs but then just past the customs, they were waiting to take our bags-never to be seen again until we got home. Very definatly worth the extra money.:)

 

We just did this again in SD and we did NOT have to touch our bags again. They were outside our door the night before and "vanished" as always and the next time we saw them was on the luggage carousel in Portland, OR. (home):D

Yes, we did put the bar-coded luggage tags that the ship provided onto them, but the airline put new tags over those............that was a first.

For me, it's definitely worth the extra money.