Another Day, Another Case of Bad Customer Service (Times 2)

I just got back from travel. Not a pleasant day.

Got to the airport around 8AM and found out that my airline had cancelled my flight. So did they re-book me on a later flight? No, they didn't, but they did offer to put me on flights tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. No hotel for the night. Seems like a problem to me. Didn't to them. They maybe United, but they weren't very friendly.

So on to step two, I called my travel group and they rebooked me on another airline (American - the only one that had any seats today). So I go over there, buy my ticket, and check my bag. Oops, one little thing, I'm going home to San Diego, and my suitcase is booked to Nassau. Uh, let's fix that can we?

So after step three, me and my luggage are both ticketed to San Diego. Long layover in Chicago, but I should be home same day. After I land, no luggage. Seriously, no suitcase. No idea where it is. May have stayed on the plane I took to Chicago (which flew on to Houston). May have been mishandled in Chicago and sent anywhere. May have stayed in Chicago. May still have gone to Nassau. No one knows. Nobody in Chicago would answer the phone when the luggage person called from here (it was, after all, 7:00 PM in Chicago).

They claim that if the bag got left in Chicago, it will be on the next flight out here. They even nicely said that, if I don't hear from them by 10:30 PM I can call this number they gave me. So I ask them, "UH, I got up at 7 AM Eastern time. That's 4 AM Pacific. Do you really think I'm still going to be awake then?" They actually acted like I was being unreasonable. Well it's now 9:30, and I'm gonna stay up, and call, just to see how worthless it turns out to be.

Anyways, I'll post an update as things transpire.

UPDATE: It is now 4PM on Thursday. I've been on the ground, without my bag and all its contents, for about 23 hours. The airline has no information on the whereabouts of my bag. The contents of my bag include a medical testing kit I'm supposed to use twice daily. So far the airline has continued to ask me to wait a little longer before they will replace it. I'm starting to get the idea that they just don't care.

I should be fair. The last person I talked to on the phone spent almost 15 minutes with me trying to get somebody "above them" to actually do something, so there are apparently a few folks in their customer service chain that actually understand what those two words mean...

Supposedly if they don't have definite word on the bag in the next hour they will do something. Update(s) to come!

FINAL UPDATE: Well they found the bag. No hints why it arrived. It just did. Interestingly, the handling tag lists the same flights I had, but the serial number of the tag was different from the one on my receipt. No idea if that means anything. I suspect that it came in today on the same flight I took yesterday. Wierd.