Airline baggage advice!

[common sense]

A good friend of mine just returned from a trip and told me about an interesting problem that arose. When they checked in at the airline counter for their return trip their luggage, two bags,  suddenly gained over 80 lbs!  The only thing they had purchased was a couple of pairs of shoes. (Yeah, they are boring!) The person told the airline attendant to check that weight again.  The attendant replied, " I had my foot on the scale."  There were no apologies or anything.  Upon boarding the plane (which was delayed about 7 hours) they had the opportunity to talk to several other people that had to pay for extra weight.  They hadn't really thought about it until after they had paid CASH for the difference in weight.  They quickly realized that they had the same attendant with an apparent "lead foot" and I am guessing, a bottomless cash drawer.  I am sure that I could have easily been in this same situation after a long trip and weary from traveling.  It is very easy to get duped these days.  I just wanted to pass this little lesson along since the airlines are in a constant state of change and it is so easy to get thrown off balance during a flight.

 

[Doc]

It's called job security. The less money they lose, the less of a chance of them losing their job! It's wrong , but they think they're doing their part.

 

[justintime]

I have heard of lots of these situations in the past year, especially from people returning from winter holidays in Mexico. In these cases, their luggage on the return trip weighed much more than the luggage when they left and in most cases, these people had to pay penalties between $80 to $100. I have heard as high as a penalty of $150 and when they have complained they are told that they will jhave to miss their return flight and give the Mexican police a statement. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that everyone pays the penalty and gets on the plane. Missing the flight is bad enough. Dealing with the Mexican police is another issue!