Readers' Forum: Have Your Say

Is it time to say ciao to Kathleen’s lost luggage?

Kathleen Murphy lost a large suitcase on an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome last January and has spent several months trying to either get the luggage back or be properly compensated, with no joy.

“We reported the loss at Fiumicino Airport in Rome and got our missing baggage file reference number,” she writes. They later completed a baggage questionnaire on the Aer Lingus website after which she received a call from “the Central Baggage Tracing people”.

She heard no more from the airline so at the beginning of April she wrote them a letter claiming compensation. She received no reply. She then e-mailed Central Baggage Tracing (CBT) and she received a mail by return saying it had forwarded her mail to Aer Lingus’s head office. Again there was no reply. She e-mailed CBT again but this time the mail was ignored.

“I realise that ash clouds dominate now, however I am very upset and angry at their lack of response and lack of consideration. Is there a time limit for making compensation claims on the part of Aer Lingus?”

We contacted the airline to find out what was going on. It said our reader had provided a number of receipts for items but added that there were a number of items being claimed, for which no receipts were provided. “A reply was sent to Ms Murphy on May 12th, asking that she provide receipts for the items for which she is claiming compensation and her bank account details for reimbursement. As with all claims we require support documentation in the form of receipts for items being claimed. The items for which receipts have been provided will be reimbursed when bank details are made available.”

Mother board R.I.P

In early May 2008, Mary Ann Anderson bought a Packard Bell computer for her daughter at a cost of €500. “Two weeks ago the computer ‘died’,” she writes. She brought it back to PC World. They phoned her days later to say the mother board was dead and could not be repaired. “It would cost nearly the price of another computer to repair the thing and in any case PC World did not do that type of repair and would have to send it back to Packard Bell in England.

“They could not tell me what would cause the mother board to ‘die’ and could only say ‘It’s just one of those things that happens’. I’m just wondering now, is two years the life expectancy of Packard Bell computers?”

Pushing the envelope

Last year, Jim Reidy booked two tickets for the upcoming Bob Dylan concert. “They arrive. In a tiny opened envelope. Vertical! That is, standing up in the envelope. How they got through the postal system I don’t know. And thank God my postman is so honest!” He thought at the time that he should e-mail Pricewatch to give out but never got around to it. “Then I book two tickets for Leonard Cohen in Sligo. They arrive. In an open envelope! And these people have the gall to levy a handling charge! They can’t even secure the freakin’ envelope!”

More on panini-gate

Okay, okay, so this is the very last mention of panini-gate, which, keen eyed readers may recall, started when a reader called Percy Boland contacted us to say he had paid more than €9 for a ham salad panini at Dublin airport. An airport spokeswoman responded by saying she had checked in all the food outlets in the airport and the cost was €6.95. Our reader responded with details of the restaurant where he had paid over €9 and another reader backed his price claim.

The airport spokeswoman then said Boland must have bought a deli open sandwich which were “a premium product . . . with 30 per cent more filling than a traditional sandwich” and did retail for up to €8.80. Well, Boland has been in touch again, this time from Dublin airport. “I popped in the ‘panini gate’ deli to check on the panini prices,” he writes. “The deli has stopped doing paninis but are doing a very similar baguette for €6.95 as opposed to €8.80 for our panini-gate one! That’s €6.95 for the previous €8.80 item. Well done to Pricewatch for a consumer win.”