Letter to the debacle known as Continental Airlines

Continental Airlines

Our Flight from Austin to Jacksonville, Fl on 6/22/11 was delayed due to weather. My business colleague and I had to spend the night in Houston. All flights to Florida ended at 7 pm even though the weather had been clear for hours prior to that.

All voucher accepting hotels were full, so we had to incur $30 in cab fare, $82 in hotel and $50 in meals for 2 breakfasts and two dinners, total of  $162.  The next morning, our flight to Jax, Fl was delayed three times and had three gate changes.  The stewardess on the flight to Jax, Fl was rude and seemed bothered by her job. 

Upon arriving in Jax, Fl one of our bags was lost. The value of the bag was $5000. The baggage clerk in Jax, Fl – Denise – was rude and unsympathetic. She told us that “…It is only common sense”, (implying we had none), to make sure we label every bag we hand over to Continental Airlines. She told us that the bar codes on the bags are not scanned. We later found out that this is not true. She finally offered a strained apology after I became more upset with her lack of professionalism and downright rude behavior toward your customer. She needs to be fired immediately.

We reported the lost bag. I called baggage tracking and they also seemed equally ill informed as to how bags are identified when Continental airlines takes possession of them.  I was told that bags are scanned only to “clear’ them, not to identify them. I could not get a straight answer to a most simple question of “ How do you identify your baggage?” I was then told that all bags end up in a warehouse in Houston, TX, whereby they are opened and the contents matched with my description of them. I was then informed that I have to fill out your lost baggage form, which I am doing; fax it to your system tracking center and wait.  Typing this letter, filling out the form and faxing it has taken 2 hours of my time. My time is worth $42 per hour, total = $84. Added to the above total, it is now $244 lost due to the inefficiency of Continental Airlines, not counting the time lost due to an overnight stay in Houston, TX and my lost bag, worth $5000.

I need Continental Airlines to compensate me for the $244 I have lost and I need my bag returned to me within the next 45 days.  I need either a voucher for the amount or a free, roundtrip ticket to the destination of my choosing that equates to the $244 I have lost. I will post this letter all over every social media outlet I can find, every blog and everyone I know if I am not compensated in some manner. The President of your airline does a little speech during pre flight, does he mean what he says or is it all smoke and mirrors and just another shallow airline scam? He will be my next point of contact if this issue is not resolved.


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