Hey, EU-savvy friends. Vueling lost my baggage on a recent trip. I'm trying to file a claim with them, but the only path to do so is via their chatbot, which only produces this error:
> Sorry, this page doesn't exist. You can access all our Virtual Assistants on our Customer Services Centre
How do I open a complaint with the EC about this?
@pluralistic Depends on the country, as the EC is unlikely to be responsible for this. In Germany the "Verbraucherzentrale" would help. Given they sit in Spain, not sure what applies there - I guess the place to file a complaint is https://portal-cec.consumo.gob.es but I am not sure.
Practically though, the chatbot is not the only way. Send an email, a letter, or even a (yes, really) fax. A good keyword to find usable addresses is "imprint" or "Impressum".
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@pluralistic Did some more digging. Spanish law too requires a working email address (and no autodenyer). Did you get a PIR number at the airport when you reported the loss?
Other than that, in addition to the above, the best way to contact the company is so called Burofax whatever that is. You can also direct complaints for specific cases like this to the AESA which is responsible for airline passenger rights.
Retorical questions...
Have you gone to an airline rep or office at an airport? One that is personneled by humans?
Or a travel agent for the airline?
Or perhaps a hotel concierge (who may have had to do this before)?
Do you have a pitchfork and a torch?
Or is that in your luggage?
Vueling acc to wikipedia is spanish. What were your endpoints?
The thread says that you have a Dutch phone number.
Well, this is an intrigueing moment in the history of enshitification.
Your endpoint wasn't Brazille, perhaps, was it. I mean the movie, not the country.
@pluralistic Around 12 years ago, I lost my baggage on a multi-stop flight through CDG. Although the airline responded (in an automated way), they obviously spent no efforts in actually finding the baggage. Apparently, it was considered cheaper to just pay the damages.
I didn't give up at this point, but looked up all subcontractors for baggage handling of all involved airports. I sent e-mails with a detailed description of my baggage to them. Surprisingly, I actually got responses by humans - and one of them was even able to track down my baggage! A few weeks later, I had it back in my hands.
Wonder if that still works in today's world of deteriorating service quality, but I'd definitely give it a try.
@pluralistic
EC complains about airlines are handled by the respective government national enforcement bodies, which do exchange complaints if a different one turns out to be responsible.
Here's a list of them with website addresses (sadly I only know the PDF link). Hope it helps.
hertg
Cory Doctorow
Chuckles
Rainer Typke
Lars Leichert
divVerent
ideaPDish
Colin Finck
AKK
Tonanio 🇪🇺 🇵🇹 🇺🇦 🇵🇱
Thijs
Stephan Eggermont
sadedoes
CarbonShifter
Peter Brown