Shit stolen from my luggage. Any recourse?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So how screwed am I?

I recently flew from Tampa, FL to Frankfurt, Germany with stops in Chicago and London. When I arrived in Frankfurt, none of my bags were there. One bag arrive at the airport 2 hours later, and I was informed that in another 2 hours, the other bag would arrive. It did not. With no further explanation as to why I just wasted another 2 hours of waiting, they told me it would arrive in the morning and they would send it to me with a courier.
Next day, no bag. Various email exchanges ensue. They promise I will have it the next day by 9am.
Next day, still no bag. At 5pm they tell me they will contact the courier and see if he can still deliver it that night. They say they will call me back in 2 hours.
I have to sit by the phone because my cell phone is in the missing bag. At 7pm they tell me that I can either wait until tomorrow or go pick up the bag from the courier myself. I am told that the courier office is only 40km from my location.
I only have an hour to get there and I’m driving through unfamiliar area, so I quickly print out some maps and get going.
After I’ve been driving a bit, I realize that the town is 80km away!!! I barely make it there by 8pm. Actually, I was a couple minutes late, but they still let me in and gave me my bag. Thanks UPS!
Anyway, when I get back home, I open up the box and there’s my bag–completely molested! Every little pocket unzipped, everything rummaged through. Gotta be diligent against terrorists, I guess. I wouldn’t even mind any of this so much except that there was a small mesh, zippered bag in the main compartment with 2,000 EURO in it. There was… now there isn’t. At some point between Tampa and Frankfurt, it was stolen.

Yea, yea… why would you ever check so much cash… bla bla. I didn’t know it was in there. My wife moved it from her purse to my bag while we were in Tampa because she figured it would be safer and she knows I NEVER check my back pack. I always carry it on. But when I got to Tampa to fly out, I was running late because of weather and just wanted to rush through security. So I figured I’d just check the bag.

Anyway, is there any recourse? I’m sure I’m just completely screwed out of my money. Anyone have any experience with stolen items in their luggage? That must have been just the easiest grab in the world. Open a back pack and the first thing you see is twenty 100 EURO bills in a lil mesh bag. How would you ever get caught. Considering how long my bag took to get to me, it could have happened almost anywhere!!

2

It’s gone, never to be seen again.

3

Yeah, you should file a claim anyway but… don’t get your hopes up. At all.

Unfortunate that we have more to fear from airport security than security has to fear from us.

4

That sucks!

What sucks worse is that you are SOL. They force you to leave your bags unlocked, then claim they’re not responsible for lost or stolen items from your bags. And they specifically exclude cash, jewelry and electronics. You’re screwed. Sorry. :frowning:

5

What a brilliant system. Harass and detain people who carry large amounts of cash through security, encouraginging them to put it in their luggage, where you can steal it. Plus, they have cash-sniffing dogs, supposedly to help find drug smugglers or something. Who needs a paycheck when you’ve got Fido the furry cash detector and a conveyor belt of Samsonite ATMs.

Sorry dude, you are boned.

6

You’re never going to get anything like real compensation.

In my own experience (DVDs stolen at JFK on a flight to london), it wasn’t too hard to get an offer of compensation after I filed a claim. However, there’s a reason for this.

On international flights, compensation for lost/stolen luggage is, they told me, determined under a standard formula set out in the Warsaw Convention.–This values your stuff at $9.07/pound. (see, for example, http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/travel/baggage/liability.aspx).

The rate’s unfair in general, and is just absurd for light, valuable things.

In the end, I was offered about three dollars of compensation for four stolen DVDs (I didn’t even bother collecting-just not worth the effort). A little bag with twenty bills in it probably weighs even less than that.

I’ve never packed anything I’m not willing to lose in checked luggage since then.

7

Hmm… this site pegs the price of lead at $0.93/pound. So if you fly around with 50 pounds* of lead slugs in your suitcase, that’s over $400 profit when they get “lost”!

*Last time I flew I believe 50 pounds was the maximum weight a checked bag could be before you got hit with a surcharge.