Just off Harmony - They lost our luggage - Beware!!

[MADflyer]

They have changed the baggage area in the terminal in Barcelona and it is no longer a carousel system but rather the individual numbered areas are roped off like they are in Fort Lauderdale. !!!!

 

I think you must have been in Terminal C then, they have the carousels in Terminal B still.

 

As I paid for my entire family, I had paid for insurance through RCI. This turned out to be worthless for me. As my brother had first reported his missing bag they would not change it over to my name, even though I had paid and had a great deal of additional coverage.

 

They literally said that their policy would not cover this incident as the luggage was missing after we had left the ship, even though we were on a RCI airport transfer. They then sent a copy of a clause in the cruise passenger agreement that stated that any lost luggage must be reported prior to leaving the ship.

 

I hope they treat you better than they did me. I was very surprised at how poorly they handled my case.

 

Be happy if you have an independent policy and be sure the report is issued with your name on it.

 

It is understood that they must first research if there is a matching bag on the ship, in the terminal or even left to the ship's agent Intercruises by the airport or the guest who took it by 'mistake'

[LMaxwell]

One of the best ways to protect your luggage is making it very different from anyone else's.

 

Whether you use colored straps, multicolored yarn pompoms, big stickers or whatever, make it different!

 

Our bags have brightly colored fabric tied to the handle, and each bag is strapped with conspicuous straps for identification and in case a zipper fails.

 

the first photo on my camera card is our contact info, followed by photos of our luggage. Inside each piece of luggage is a print out with our contact info.

 

Have never lost a piece of luggage traveling. That's not to say it is foolproof, but making your bag different and easy to identify surely helps.

 

OP - hope they find your bag or at least expedite the claims process.

[diesel1973]

Really? Was he holding it hostage? Hah.

 

When we disembarked Navigator in Southampton last month, we found my husband's bag quickly, but mine was not in the designated numbered section. Eventually I found it in the section for non-tagged bags. The disembarkation tag must have fallen off somewhere along the line.

 

The funny thing was that this was not our first luggage misadventure that trip. My husband's bag was delayed by British Airways. We flew to London through Chicago on Friday overnight, and his bag never made it onto the flight from O'Hare to Heathrow. We toured London on Saturday, then took the bus to Southampton on Sunday, before the cruise Monday. There was a mixup on BA's part with the tag number, so it did not make it to London in time for the cruise. BA told us to buy what he needed, and they'd reimburse us.

 

There is a great mall in Southampton, so we went to Marks & Spencer, Decathlon Sports, and Boots, and bought everything he needed. Scanned the receipts when we got home, submitted them on the BA website, and two days later had the full amount deposited directly into our checking account. That's customer service!

Basically yes he tried to hold it hostage.When I informed him that he had my lugagge,he said "then you must have mine".I was so irritated that I snatched it from his hand and told him " I didn't have his luggage and didn't care where it was!"

[CapeCodCruiser]

So sorry about the lost bag - what a PITA!

 

But thank you for reinforcing to me why I use carry on bags only - no matter what the trip!

[cb8]

Why do people never learn? Yes it is a great service if all goes to plan but deal with your own bags when leaving the ship and guess what.... you will have nothing to complain about.

 

 

Looking forward to the review :D

[L454S]

Could it be RCI's fault.....yes

 

Could it be the port terminal's fault.....yes

 

My money would be on another passenger grabbing the wrong bag. Happened to us in Newark, NJ last year. Took some harsh explaining by port personnel on the phone with the "gentleman" why his bag was sitting there all by itself and he had my bag. He did not want to hear about it.....unbelievable!!!!

[tmarsh]

PLease Please Please do not reply unless you have some suggestions or past experience with RCCL lost luggage. Your lectures are not helping anyone. Like another post said if everyone carried their own luggage off it would be a mess. Can you imagine the situation in the elevators with 5,000+ people carrying all their own luggage. YOU wouldn't be able to depart for hours. I personally will never let a cruise line handle my luggage in a foreign port. Spoke to RCCL again this morning. Just this morning I was the third call this representative spoke to about missing luggage from Harmony in Barcelona for June 26, 16 sailing. I think this problem is a Barcelona port problem. Warning to anyone sailing on Harmony - Do not let them handle your luggage for departure.

[setsail]

Another question, if you did not have time to look in the other place that they put luggage and your suitcase was there then you left your suitcase behind? I can see having to leave right away to catch your flight.

[CapeCodCruiser]

This is a good lesson indeed...do not make your airport connection so tight that you do not have time to deal with unforseen events. As pointed out throughout this thread there are any number of reasons your bag was not there.

 

Whatever the reason is the only thing you can do now is be patient and hope it turns up. That is the hard & frustrating part. I hope it does.

[tmarsh]

Another question, if you did not have time to look in the other place that they put luggage and your suitcase was there then you left your suitcase behind? I can see having to leave right away to catch your flight.

 

Seriously, have you traveled internationally since all of the terriorist attacks? It is a completely different ballgame now. Have you even cruised with RCCL because you obviously DO NOT know their system in foreign ports. The luggage was not where it was suppose to be. It was not in the suite partitioned off area with our other luggage. They do not put it in another areas where we didn't have time to look. We had 4 hours after disembarkment to catch a flight from Barcelona to London. Spent half an hour extra looking for our bag in the terminal where suite pinnacle and other decks were located. Do you expect for RCCL to lose your luggage on every cruise you go on and add time to look for it every time you cruise? As it was we stood in a priority line at British Airways for 90 minutes waiting to check bags and get our boarding passes. Do not reply just to hear yourself talk as many on cruise critic do.

[abo]

Seriously, have you traveled internationally since all of the terriorist attacks? It is a completely different ballgame now. Have you even cruised with RCCL because you obviously DO NOT know their system in foreign ports. The luggage was not where it was suppose to be. It was not in the suite partitioned off area with our other luggage. They do not put it in another areas where we didn't have time to look. We had 4 hours after disembarkment to catch a flight from Barcelona to London. Spent half an hour extra looking for our bag in the terminal where suite pinnacle and other decks were located. Do you expect for RCCL to lose your luggage on every cruise you go on and add time to look for it every time you cruise? As it was we stood in a priority line at British Airways for 90 minutes waiting to check bags and get our boarding passes. Do not reply just to hear yourself talk as many on cruise critic do.

 

Wow, harsh response to a valid question.

 

In fact, in Barcelona if a bag comes into the hall and does not have a tag to identify which pick up section it belongs (perhaps torn off through handling, not particularly anyone's fault), they are indeed placed in "another area" - how would they know where else to put it? This happened last year to us and yes, we were in a suite and we were in Barcelona.

[jules815]

Why would having pinnacle on your bag make someone want to steal it? Do pinnacle members carry more valuables and have more expensive items in their bags than other passengers.:confused:

 

 

 

I was wondering the same thing. :confused:

 

Our luggage is black, and before our last cruise I purchased luggage straps on Amazon with a brightly colored pattern. Makes the bags easy to identify, and also secures them from splitting open during transit. (Once saw a woman at the baggage carousel at O'Hare with a split zipper on her bag, and her clothes were loose, scattered all over the place. Felt so bad for her.)

Edited July 5, 2016 by jules815

[tlatrice]

PLease Please Please do not reply unless you have some suggestions or past experience with RCCL lost luggage. Your lectures are not helping anyone. Like another post said if everyone carried their own luggage off it would be a mess. Can you imagine the situation in the elevators with 5,000+ people carrying all their own luggage. YOU wouldn't be able to depart for hours. I personally will never let a cruise line handle my luggage in a foreign port. Spoke to RCCL again this morning. Just this morning I was the third call this representative spoke to about missing luggage from Harmony in Barcelona for June 26, 16 sailing. I think this problem is a Barcelona port problem. Warning to anyone sailing on Harmony - Do not let them handle your luggage for departure.

 

Who's lecturing you? :confused:

 

You admit that if everyone carried their own luggage it would be a nightmare. Then warn people not to let the cruise line handle the luggage.

 

 

They do not put it in another areas where we didn't have time to look.

 

But it could have been there. Since you didn't have time to look, it could very well have been misdirected there.

 

I do hope you find the luggage. I left something on the ship once and it took a couple of months for them to finally tell me they couldn't find it. It was a small item. Perhaps with luggage they'll be more diligent.

[Royal2464]

It could have been another passenger, I was looking for ours one time and saw one of the bags being taken away by a porter. An old guy, apparently with poor eyesight, had told the porter it was his. If I hadn't noticed, hard telling if I ever would have seen it again.

 

Unfortunately a lot of luggage looks alike. I have a large black suitcase that has been taken by other passengers twice. The first time I had to wait 90 minutes and then it showed up. A porter had taken it all the way to someone's car before they realized they had an extra bag. Fortunately they did not have enough room and discovered why. After that I put two long light brown strips of tape on the bag to distinguish it from the others. Didn't work, but I spotted it in the Custom's line and retrieved it quickly. The woman who was taking it reacted by saying "Well where is my suitcase?" I replied "How the **** should I know!"

 

Now my bag has about twenty pieces of light brown tape covering all sides and hopefully it will not be taken in error again. It looks like it belongs to a homeless person, but it sure is easy to find now.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Royal2464

[Langley Cruisers]

PLease Please Please do not reply unless you have some suggestions or past experience with RCCL lost luggage. Your lectures are not helping anyone. Like another post said if everyone carried their own luggage off it would be a mess. Can you imagine the situation in the elevators with 5,000+ people carrying all their own luggage. YOU wouldn't be able to depart for hours...

 

Ya think? Then I am so confused as to why you yourself said do not let RCI handle your bags. You are contradicting yourself with every reply.

 

I am sorry you lost your bag, I truly am. It's a pain. But, I think you are lashing out at the wrong people, members here included who just want to comment and help. Why don't you take a step back from the computer today and don't expend your energy telling others what to do and what comments to write here. OK? Take a breath? :):):)

[SilkySal]

Have cruised dozens of time and (knock on wood) have never lost a bag! There were several times that our basic black bags (marked with wide duct tape with out last name on them) were almost taken by other passengers but luckily we were there to stop them! Once, we found one of them in the lost & found area, probably because a passenger picked it up and then realized it wasn't theirs. For these reasons, I have purchased new luggage (cosmos space design on them); hopefully, this loud design will not be mistaken anymore. Unfortunately, our garment bags are still plain (one brown and one navy blue), so will need to keep a watchful eye on them!!;) We always clearly mark them with our names, so hope we don't have future problems!!:rolleyes:

[Thetrail]

Just off the Harmony sailing june 26, 2016 and will post a detailed review soon. We were in a Royal Family suite and put our luggage out the night before departure as we have done for all of our past 6 RCCL cruises. When we got to the luggage reclaim at 7:20am a piece of our luggage was missing. All 4 pieces were left out at the same time, all had personal luggage tags as well as royal's pinnacle suite tag with our name, address, number and email. No one at the terminal was interested in helping us locate the missing piece. We searched the one terminal by ourselves but did not have time due to an early flight to search the other terminal. Trying to file a claim with them is very frustrating. Never let RCCL handle any luggage especially if the port is in a foreign country. I suspect we will never see that piece of luggage again due to their negligence.

But don't be so quick to judge, since you really don't know what happened to your luggage. Honestly it very well could have been that another passenger has your luggage. Bad luck, yes it happens, it's frustrating. Have been lucky with the number of cruises we have taken have never lost anything while cruising.....K.O.

[Thetrail]

PLease Please Please do not reply unless you have some suggestions or past experience with RCCL lost luggage. Your lectures are not helping anyone. Like another post said if everyone carried their own luggage off it would be a mess. Can you imagine the situation in the elevators with 5,000+ people carrying all their own luggage. YOU wouldn't be able to depart for hours. I personally will never let a cruise line handle my luggage in a foreign port. Spoke to RCCL again this morning. Just this morning I was the third call this representative spoke to about missing luggage from Harmony in Barcelona for June 26, 16 sailing. I think this problem is a Barcelona port problem. Warning to anyone sailing on Harmony - Do not let them handle your luggage for departure.

OK I get your upset and probably being a bit irrational. It sucks to lose luggage. All you can do now is go through the process. As far as having RCL handling my luggage domestically or internationally, your post means zero as far as letting RCL handle my luggage. You are one, just one of thousands upon thousands of RCL passengers they get their luggage fine cruise after cruise. Take a chill pill......K.O.

[lady_cruiser]

... yellow baggage straps with black writing that says 'HANDS OFF THIS IS NOT YOUR BAG!' Lol

 

We have the extract same straps :)

[Pennstateman]

I usually have an individual gps device sewn into every piece of my Costco underwear and socks. That way, if someone steals them, I can report directly to the fbi

[ReneeFLL]

PLease Please Please do not reply unless you have some suggestions or past experience with RCCL lost luggage. Your lectures are not helping anyone. Like another post said if everyone carried their own luggage off it would be a mess. Can you imagine the situation in the elevators with 5,000+ people carrying all their own luggage. YOU wouldn't be able to depart for hours. I personally will never let a cruise line handle my luggage in a foreign port. Spoke to RCCL again this morning. Just this morning I was the third call this representative spoke to about missing luggage from Harmony in Barcelona for June 26, 16 sailing. I think this problem is a Barcelona port problem. Warning to anyone sailing on Harmony - Do not let them handle your luggage for departure.

 

You are totally contradicting yourself. You can't have it both ways. You need to step back from the situation and relax for a minute. Since you don't really know what happened to it you shouldn't be blaming Harmony until you have all the facts.

[ReneeFLL]

..... however we have just purchased three yellow baggage straps with black writing that says 'HANDS OFF THIS IS NOT YOUR BAG!' Lol

These sound really funny. I need to find some for us.

[shirazcruiser]

Great idea! I'm definitely buying some colorful straps. I found the "Hands Off" straps and more at Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011DDC8MA/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1IOV855C3DWY6&coliid=ID5LFXVVOUZZS&psc=1

[txcowboy10]

We have the extract same straps :)

 

Where did u get them? I'd like to order same kind for upcoming Barcelona cruise...thx

 

Mark

[jules815]

Where did u get them? I'd like to order same kind for upcoming Barcelona cruise...thx

 

Mark

 

They have a large variety of luggage straps on Amazon. That's where we got ours.