Stolen Luggage

[Distinctive-Destinations]

52 minutes ago, UKstages said:

no, the smart thieves target briggs and riley, rimowa, paravel, tumi and luis vuitton, as there is much more likely to be something of value inside, not to mention the bag itself is worth $600 - $2500.

 

who are these people who so consistently give you such erroneous information?

 

Do you have a lot of conversations with thieves to know this?

[Guindalf]

As a professional thief myself, I get great results when I pay for a week long cruise and target peoples’ dirty laundry in cheap suitcases!

[drumming cruisers]

Did you call the port? Our luggage was missing, we contacted NCL and was told to call the port. It took them week, but it was found on a dock somewhere. (was in Seattle). They had it sent to via UPS. 

[jimsig]

1 hour ago, laudergayle said:

On our last flight, I was sitting in the airport lounge when my phone notified me that our bags were now loaded on a flight that wasn’t ours, arriving two hours earlier.  I imagined our bags on the carousel hoping someone wouldn’t lift them.  The desk agent assured me this was common and they would be put aside in LAX…they were.

Luckily the airlines have an agent go to the carousel after the area has cleared and will take any bags remaining with them for safe keeping so they don't go around for hours and hours.  But it still can be nerve-racking not knowing if they will be there.  

[jimsig]

45 minutes ago, RocketMan275 said:

We were once booked on a HSV to SLC connecting through ATL.

Our HSV flight was delayed and the HSV gate agent told us we might  make our ATL connection but our bags would not so they were booking us on a later flight so we would arrive SLT same time as our bags.

(You know where this is going right?)

We waited at the carousel in SLT and our bags didn't show.

We went to lost baggage where we found our bags.

The bags had arrived on the original flight, the one we were told our bags would make.

Have had it happen a few times where the bags made a connection but we didn't.  We came down the escalator and we could clearly see our bags sitting in a roped off area.  Might have been the quickest I ever got out of an airport with checked bags.

 

Another time was connecting internationally through ATL so we had to recheck our bags.  There was supposed to be a noon and a 1p flight to our final destination.  We were on the 1p and the noon flight was being shown as delayed.  As I had a normal bag and a golf bag there were 2 different places to place the bags after being rechecked.  Get to our final destination and my suitcase comes out but no golf bag.  As I was about to go to lost luggage I hear them announce the noon flights bags were arriving on a carousel a few away from mine and it was on the way to lost luggage, ends up the noon flight left after ours.  I walked to that carousel and low and behold the first thing to come out were my clubs. We happened to know people on our flight and their luggage was also on the earlier flight and they originally boarded in ATL.  

[ontheweb]

2 hours ago, laudergayle said:

I,too, have had the no bag on the carousel, more than once.  When it did happen, I found the airline representatives to be helpful…and empathetic.  Perhaps the empathy on behalf of those the OP dealt with was missing.  Unfortunately, many people are not emphathetic. 

Only once for us. We did a land trip to first Paris and then Amsterdam. One bag was missing in Amsterdam. And yes, they were compassionate and asked what we needed. They also commented on the airport at Paris.

 

And our bag did find its way back to the hotel we were staying in Amsterdam later.

 

Oh, and it was the only flight that we were charged for baggage. I put in a claim to the credit card we used for the charge for one bag, and the charge was reversed.

[BirdTravels]

4 hours ago, cruiseaholic78 said:

I have been told never to add your address to your luggage label as it is possible that thieves will also know that your house is empty!

Many airlines will not accept luggage without an external address. 

[BirdTravels]

3 hours ago, UKstages said:

all things being equal, it's a lot easier to steal a bag with no locks than a bag with locks. that is all.

Not really. I can open any suitcase lock in 1 or 2 seconds with a pair of pliers. If I were a luggage thief, the presence of a lock would have zero consideration in my decision on which bag to snatch. 

[shof515]

It is very easy to open tsa locks,  all you need is a pen or similar object. Google and YouTube can show you how ineffective these locks are

 

[UKstages]

3 hours ago, Distinctive-Destinations said:

Do you have a lot of conversations with thieves to know this?

 

i spoke to the same folks the chief spoke to.

 

1 hour ago, BirdTravels said:

Not really. I can open any suitcase lock in 1 or 2 seconds with a pair of pliers. If I were a luggage thief, the presence of a lock would have zero consideration in my decision on which bag to snatch. 

 

if you were a luggage thief, you'd not want to waste 1 or 2 seconds. also, it'd be more like 45 to 60 seconds. oh, and also, you wouldn't want to carry around a pair of pliers.

 

what i actually said was that a lock was a visual deterrent. and that "all things being equal," a thief would prefer an unlocked bag. if you're going to steal a bag, you go for the one likely to cause you the fewest number of problems. same thing with automobiles. thieves prefer unlocked cars by a wide margin.

 

11 minutes ago, shof515 said:

It is very easy to open tsa locks,  all you need is a pen or similar object. Google and YouTube can show you how ineffective these locks are

 

gosh, you guys sure do like to focus on a minute detail of a rather helpful post. the point was never that a lock - any lock - can't be defeated. the point was to use a TSA lock if you don't want your bag damaged or destroyed by security personnel. 

 

Edited March 10 by UKstages

[pandncruisers]

1 hour ago, BirdTravels said:

Many airlines will not accept luggage without an external address. 

We have never included our address on the outside of our luggage and it has never been a problem.

[Distinctive-Destinations]

35 minutes ago, pandncruisers said:

We have never included our address on the outside of our luggage and it has never been a problem.

Same. I fly mostly with American (and its partners) and I’ve checked plenty of luggage. I don’t think I have ever had an address tag on a piece of luggage I have owned, unless many many years ago as a kid.

[zqvol]

3 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

Many airlines will not accept luggage without an external address. 

Which airlines are you telling us about?

Edited March 11 by zqvol

[laudergayle]

Well, you definitely want your phone number.  Honestly, if not for my immediate contact info, I would have taken an unknown bag to ATL,  while my bag traveled to Rochester, NY…or worse, abandoned at the NYC Manhattan Pier.  

[purpleally]

4 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

Many airlines will not accept luggage without an external address. 

I do not think that is true

[kelib]

One time I had to practically wrestle my suitcase from some man in the cruise terminal who thought my luggage was his. I had to go and grab the piece that was the faded version of mine. He didn’t even acknowledge that he made a mistake. Thankfully I use AirTags for my luggage now. 

[ChiefMateJRK]

8 minutes ago, kelib said:

One time I had to practically wrestle my suitcase from some man in the cruise terminal who thought my luggage was his. I had to go and grab the piece that was the faded version of mine. He didn’t even acknowledge that he made a mistake. Thankfully I use AirTags for my luggage now. 

Would the air tags have made any difference?

[JennKach]

Most people are assuming the bag made it to the luggage area.  My last “lost” bag was left behind in an airport luggage truck where it hung out on the tarmac for about 4 hours until someone noticed it lurking in the dark corner.  I had an AirTag and showed the location to the lost luggage office.  It was 100 yards away but no one could find it. I got it back the next day.

[MoCruiseFan]

4 hours ago, Distinctive-Destinations said:

Same. I fly mostly with American (and its partners) and I’ve checked plenty of luggage. I don’t think I have ever had an address tag on a piece of luggage I have owned, unless many many years ago as a kid.

 

We fly AA as well and never had any issue with name/address on tags.

[Lazy in NC]

I can relate to this poster about the lack of help from the cruise line. They use outside companies who you can not communicate by phone, text, or email. You fill out a form on their website. In the case of Celebrity it was chargerback.com . We arrived back from our cruise in November to the Rome cruise port. Our tag number was number 12. One of our pieces of luggage was missing. We had an AirTag. It showed it was still in the arrivals hall. We looked through all the bins and it was not there. Next thing we know the AirTag is showing movement. It went to the rome airport. We thought for sure the people who took the luggage would realize they had the wrong luggage. Next thing we know the luggage is in Amsterdam. Then it is in Southampton England. It’s sat there for seven days. The website asked if we had an AirTag. Yes, we said, and they said to post a location, which we did three days later they came back and said they can’t find our luggage. I again posted the location that the AirTag showed where the luggage was. Three days later again, the company said we cannot find the luggage. I contacted Lost and found at the Southhampton Airport by email. They referred my email to baggage. They said they had a bag there that matched our description with somebody else’s name on it. I alerted them to the fact we had a Delta gold medallion tag and also our names were on a slot on the side of the luggage. After much begging, they agreed to put my bag on a flight back to Wilmington NC. It took a couple days, but it did eventually get back to us. There was a lot of questions at the airport on why our luggage had somebody else’s name on it. They wanted us to report it to the police as it was a crime to put luggage on a plane that did not belong to that person, but they had removed the tags that were on it. So somebody took our luggage and didn’t realize it until they got to England and just abandoned it all together. I was not happy, and I really feel celebrity was to blame because of the poor follow through with the company that they’ve hired to find lost luggage. And yet not happy with the people who took it that did not have the decency to report it. I don’t post much but have cruise for over 20 years and this has never happened. Our lock was missing but everything was there and it did not look like anyone went through the bag. No response from Celebrity until after 4 emails to the executive office.

[BirdTravels]

5 hours ago, UKstages said:

what i actually said was that a lock was a visual deterrent. and that "all things being equal," a thief would prefer an unlocked bag.

There is zero basis for this claim. None. 

 

A thief would not be rummaging through a bag in baggage claim. They would take it outside and pop the lock with a pair of pliers. A lock of any type has zero deterrence. 

[yakcruiser]

I just don't believe a thief would want to take a suitcase full of dirty clothes. The suitcase was probably forgotten about in a corner of the luggage room on the ship and now is embarking on another cruise minus its owner.

[mistertomatoe]

Sometimes you can't apply logic to a thief. It's a mistake to apply what you think as a normal person to what another does. Plenty of rich people shoplift things they can easily afford. It won't make sense to you. Especially these days when people don't seem to care and no one seems to enforce laws anymore. If you do get caught, you won't face any meaningful consequences.

 

Reminds me of this story:

https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/ex-biden-official-sam-brinton-accepts-plea-deal-in-las-vegas-luggage-theft/

 

Also the story of Sprint (contract?) employees stealing items from a passenger who left a bag behind. They did it in full view of cameras at the gate! There's also the TSA guy who stole an iPad at the security line. The media traced the iPad to his house via Apple's Find my iPad. He apparently gave it to his wife so at least he wasn't thinking of himself.

 

[mugtech]

This is why we carry our luggage off the ship.

[Laszlo]

2 hours ago, mugtech said:

This is why we carry our luggage off the ship.

Bingo

 

We have only left our luggage out twice on 14 cruises, thankfully I have very large luggage straps with our initials on them and I use AirTags 

 

These are the straps I use....  https://amzn.to/3T9P7w5