Day 1

It's been eventful.

A full flight, so we had to gate check our luggage, with a connection to the final destination.

We collected both our bags... except for one.  It wasn't on the flight.  I've never had the experience of lost baggage before. 

My impression is that the Baggage Service procedures are designed around stonewalling:

1. The notice on the lost baggage report form has a clause, which when translated to English says we're going to wait for several days to see if the bag shows up on its own before we do anything else.
2. Once the bag was found according the airline web site, we were given a 4 hour window during which we would be contacted to arrange delivery. We were finally contacted a half hour after that window, which was the first time we had a clue as to which state / country the bag was in. 
3. When we were contacted, we were given an hour and a half delivery window.
4. Two calls to the baggage service office, and just shy of two hours outside of the delivery window, there was a knock at the door.  The bag had arrived.

So what part of customer service does baggage service not understand?

1. Don't blow smoke. I'm not the center of the universe.  You're not going to do everything humanly possible to resolve my problem.  Give me a reasonable, thoughtful answer that provides reasonable expectations.
2. Don't quote unreasonable times (or times you can't meet). If I'd have been told that the bag would be delivered by 10:30 pm, I may not have been happy, but I wouldn't have wasted brain cells when it wasn't here.
3. Give me details. I've not been given a report as to what happened, but I can read the baggage tag: There's a rush tag with the rebooked flight and a TSA sticker on the luggage tag. The TSA sticker tells me that the bag needed to be rescreened, therefore someone at the hub airport missed the final destination and sent the bag with all the other gate checked bags to the luggage carousel.  Things like that happen.  Let me know what's happened and we can get on with life.

I know... my expectations are unreasonable.Next rant will be the motel room. Or maybe the car rental company...  Ranting aside, it's still good to be here.