As flying is starting back up I’ve continued to notice that there is an inordinate % of people that have no clue as to what their own luggage looks like.
When I travel for business, I do not check my bags, but when our family travels together, we will normally check our bags. While I am waiting for our bags to arrive, I people watch the other passengers claiming their bags. There is always at least one person around me that seems to pick up and look at almost every bag that comes by, regardless of the shape, size or color of the bags. These individuals tend to be white older males, but these characteristics are not exclusive.
One characteristic of the bags these clueless individuals are searching for is that when their actual bag finally arrives it usually has some sort of bright colored bow tied to it, or a rainbow strap, etc. But none of the bags that they picked up and inspected prior to their bag arriving had such an adornment.
I have some theories on why this happens so frequently.
Their spouses pack the bags and likely checked the bag, but they have been delegated to get the luggage at baggage claim, even though they don’t really know what the bag looks like.
The individuals have some sort of memory cognition problem.
The individuals live in some sort of state of confusion.
If you are traveling with someone with the above characteristics, don’t let them get the bags, please.
For any man/woman couple, but especially if they are older, the woman is less likely than the man to be able to lift the bag off the carousel. I suppose that would account for it mostly being men who are getting the luggage. It doesn’t explain why the women aren’t also hanging around to point out the right bags to their helpful hubbies.
I’m an older guy but so far I don’t have any problem recognizing both our bags (as I am usually the one delegated to get them) even though there are a number of bags with similar characteristics, and we don’t use the colored ribbon tactic. Yay me, I guess.
Heh, my gf is off at the ladies room peeing. I’m scanning the bags, watching carefully, refusing to help anyone struggling to get their bag lest mine sneak by.
At home, you’ve got a few pieces of luggage, and its easy to tell them apart - one’s big and blue, one’s dark-red and quite a bit smaller, etc. So you don’t even pay attention to the decorative bits - because you don’t need to. At the airport, you’re tired after a long flight, and presented with hundreds of bags - a much more serious problem. And even if you remember that your bag has a garish rainbow ribbon, there turn out to be quite a few bags that have a garish blue and gold ribbon, or a yellow and red ribbon, etc. And an older gentleman might very well be colorblind.
I haven’t noticed this behavior, and I flew just last week. With luggage. Not that I doubt it.
I can see looking at every bag in the vain hope that each will turn into yours to let you get out of there, but not picking a lot of them up. As they say, many bags look alike.
Printing your name on the computer generated luggage tag is a big help.
I just buy the cheapest bag (so it’s generic), and my vision isn’t great. I could miss something obvious like a brightly-colored bow. To be fair I only did that once, and it was the first time I flew by myself. Otherwise I try to pack light.
Several years ago my wife purchased a set of black and hot pink Ogio luggage. They’re hideous looking, but I guarantee nobody has ever picked one of our bags off a luggage carousel by mistake.
On a flight home, the gate agent decided that the carry on I’ve used for years w/o issue, & carried on on the way there w/o issue was suddenly too big; Not only was I now required to check it, but at quite a cost (because it was my second checked bag). Of course, when I retrieved it from the home carousel it was mangled & they wouldn’t honor a claim, either. (F-you, Lufthansa!)
If they can mangle a whole bag, surely they can lose your ribbon/bow, in which case, you have a generic black suitcase. If it’s happened to them before, I’d bet they’d think it happened again.
Or one’s decidedly blue and the other one, by comparison, is purple, but on its own could be described as blue, at least by someone with less discerning color sense.
Friends once drove me on a two-hour plus drive one way to pick up my son from a summer program (it was while I was awaiting eye surgery and was too blind to drive). As we were leaving, I knew I’d gotten the “purple” bag but I hadn’t personally supervised removal of the other one. So I asked my son, “did we put the blue bag in the trunk?” to which he answered “yes.”
You know where this is going, don’t you? I couldn’t ask my friends to drive me all the way back again, so that was the end of that. Luckily, there was nothing irreplaceable in the bag that got left behind, but it was still irritating.
Doesn’t just happen at the baggage claim. Someone once mistakenly grabbed our bag out of the overhead bin in the airplane. We had just come back from our wedding shower. There was a thousand plus dollars in the bag in cash. Plus all the cards we got so we could send thank you cards back.
I saw it happen, and managed to chase the guy down in the aisle of the airplane when we landed. He was very confused as we did not speak a common language. He thought I was trying to take his bag away from him. Got it sorted out.
When my sister graduated from high school one of our aunts gave her a set of luggage with a frilly floral pattern as a graduation present. She hated them at first, because she though they looked like “old lady” luggage. But now she has come to appreciate the fact that her bag looks nothing like any of the other bags at baggage claim.
You have to watch the carousel like a hawk to make sure a nitwit doesn’t grab your bag by mistake. It only takes one such occurrence to make you vigilant (the dolt got our bag all the way home before realizing his error and eventually returning it).
We do the decorative ribbons thing. It has worked out well thus far. And of course, never leave anything of value in your checked luggage.
I’ve used a luggage tag that flashes a marquee of light when it gets jostled. Theoretically, it would start when the luggage hit the carousel, but it was hit or miss. When it did work, I’d already identified my luggage by the look of it.
Or some nitwit mangles your bag. I saw my leather train case (I call it that because my mother called it that, but most other people call them cosmetic or makeup cases these days). This frigging moron was so desparate to get his bag that he kept pulling on it even though it was caught in a mini-scrum of other bags – including my train case. I tried to get in on one side to free my bag, but he was flailing and blocking my way (he was a large guy; I’m a small woman). Finally, he gives a great yank and pulls his suitcase out and tears the escutcheon of the lock on my bag. I was livid. Not only had he broken my bag, but I could no longer hold it by the handle. I had to hold it in my arms while juggling my regular suitcase. I’m sure he knew what he’d done because he was gone before I could react. Thankfully I was arriving home and not just beginning my trip.
The only other good thing was that the multi-generational shoe repair that I used on occasion made an excellent repair for a very reasonable price. That was the only thing that somewhat mollified my anger.
My suitcases are all black Samsonite soft-sided, so very much like many other bags. So the bright neon luggage handle wraps I bought, along with matching neon luggage tags, help to spot it.
Many years ago I had to fly to another state to have an operation. In the days leading up to the operation I bought a small suitcase on wheels to travel with. I needed something lightweight and easy to manage as I was flying, and returning, alone. My thoughts were mainly on the operation and worrying about a hundred other things and not the bag I bought. When I got to my destination and was waiting to retrieve my bag from the carousel, I had the sudden realisation I couldn’t remember what it looked like. I thought it was black - it is actually grey - and I didn’t really remember the size either. I had to wait till everyone else got their bag so I could finally identify mine.
Me, on those bags I have that are suitable for checking and nondescript, I accent them with strips of primary-colored reflective tape along edges, or across faces, and around the handles. Not as easy to come off as tied ribbon, similar effect.