Customer’s Complaint Wasn’t Enough to Rescue Bags

When I called Greyhound Lines’ chief spokeswoman, Kristin Parsley, and told her of a reader’s missing baggage case, she assured me the bus company has an outstanding retrieval system.

And just 48 hours later--but two months and seven days after the baggage was first reported missing--Greyhound paid to send it by cab to the San Fernando Valley home of its owner, proving that its system could, indeed, work.

But why did it take so long, and why did it start working only after The Times, and not the young passenger or her father, called?

Erin McDuff, 16, of Granada Hills, on a trip to Colorado with a friend’s family, took a Greyhound bus from Gunnison to the Denver airport, transferring in Pueblo and downtown Denver, where she had to catch a third airport bus because the first two were overbooked.

Attendants told the teenager not to worry. Her bags, they said, would be transferred to the right bus, and all she had to do was get aboard.

But when she reached the airport, her sleeping bag and regular bag, containing about $300 worth of belongings and $80 to $100 in cash, had not followed.

This occurred Aug. 20. A subsequent two-month effort by her father, Kevin McDuff, to find Erin’s bags got nowhere. Only two days into it, however, McDuff had talked to someone named Ernie at Greyhound baggage in Denver.

“He said that the two missing bags [with my daughter’s name, address and phone on them] were sitting right next to him . . . and he would have them shipped to us [at the North Hollywood station].”

But 10 days later, that terminal said they hadn’t arrived, and a woman at the San Fernando terminal did a computer check and found the bags had never left Denver.

McDuff then contacted the Greyhound Web site and was instructed to file a Baggage Tracer Claim.

A form he got Sept. 1 said that after its receipt, the Greyhound policy was to search for 48 hours, then forward the claim to its baggage department in Dallas, which would acknowledge receipt by mail.

But over four weeks, McDuff got no confirmation that his claim had been received. On Sept. 28, when he telephoned the baggage claims department, “the woman I spoke to said it was way too early to be calling them about the claim. She said that they would be searching for 30 days before the claim was even opened. I asked about the two-day search, and she said she wished she knew who told me that.”

On Oct. 12, McDuff received a Greyhound letter acknowledging the claim. But it added there would be no processing “until I provided the original baggage claim check; the original or copy of the bus ticket receipt and a completed claim form.” All this McDuff had previously provided.

He phoned again and “asked why were they requesting that I provide a completed claim form if they already had my completed claim form? She said, ‘Sometimes things get misplaced around here.’ ” But she promised to check his file to see what was there and what was missing, and get back to him.

She never did, and on Oct. 22, McDuff e-mailed me, saying, “I am having an incredible amount of frustration trying to get Greyhound Lines to deal with missing baggage. Any help you could provide would be really appreciated.”

As is so often the case with big companies, when I called Greyhound press relations a week ago Wednesday, it triggered action at a higher level and things started popping.

Last Friday, McDuff got a call saying his daughter’s sleeping bag had been found at the North Hollywood terminal. A second call a half hour later said the regular bag had also been found there. A third said they would be sent out by FedEx and arrive the next day. A fourth said they would come in an hour by cab.

“When we received the main bag, the identification that had been on the outside [when Ernie had it], was now inside the bag,” McDuff related. “Also, the small lock that my daughter had used to close the bag had been removed. . . .

“All the contents of the bag were there EXCEPT the cash that my daughter had unfortunately put into the bag. . . . Obviously, we won’t be seeing that money again, but we are very grateful we have Erin’s belongings returned to us.”

I asked for Greyhound’s account of what went wrong.

“We have an extensive baggage matching process where, if a bag is not claimed, it stays at the terminal for 30 days, and is entered into our lost baggage system,” Parsley answered. “After 30 days, the bag is shipped to our baggage warehouse in Dallas where it stays for another 90 days and is reentered into the lost baggage system. During that time, employees search bags when they reach the warehouse to find identification inside if possible.

“If a passenger’s checked baggage is [still] not found . . . they will receive a check from Greyhound for $250, Additional insurance can be purchased for $10.”

But in this case, I pointed out to Parsley, the baggage was sent--at McDuff’s request, it is true--at some point during 60 days to North Hollywood, from which he never heard anything. It was apparently never sent to Dallas.

Parsley responded, “Unfortunately, this was a service failure.”

What about the missing money, I asked. “We do not pay if the baggage is found,” she said.

And what about the insurance? Had Erin had that, she might have been fully reimbursed for the theft.

Well, Parsley said, the insurance is not offered verbally by ticket agents, but there are signs in terminals advertising it.

I asked Erin, if she had seen or heard any offer for baggage insurance? No, she said.

Parsley said Greyhound handles “more than 20 million bags a year, and occasionally we do fail.” Precisely how often, she didn’t know.

In this case, as in so many others with customer service, the average customer had a hard time getting service, and only when the newspaper called and bad publicity loomed did it seem there was much effort to put things right.

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Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com