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- A United traveler said her lost luggage was sent to an apartment complex and a McDonald’s.
- United customer service told her to “calm down,” according to screenshots she shared on Twitter.
- The delivery driver said her bag was under a different passenger and he took it to another address.
A United Airlines passenger said her Apple AirTag showed tha her lost suitcase was delivered to an apartment complex and then a McDonald’s restaurant after her flight.
Valerie Szybala tweeted about her experience on Sunday and spoke to The Independent.
After landing in Washington DC on December 28, United notified Szybala through the app that her luggage was delayed and would arrive in the capital city the following day, she told The Independent.
Szybala told the publication that she chose to have her luggage delivered to her home but it was a “big mistake.”
In a Twitter thread, Szybala said her AirTag showed her luggage was sitting inside a residential apartment complex for more than a day. She shared photos of what appeared to be United passengers’ bags outside the complex, near the trash.
“I actually went over to investigate that night to see if this was really, as I thought it was, a residential apartment building. And it was,” Szybala told The Independent.
When Szybala contacted United’s customer service team, a representative told her to “calm down” and said the bag was safe at the delivery service, according to screenshots of the conversation, which Szybala tweeted.
Three days after Szybala’s luggage ended up at the apartment complex, her bag was moved to a McDonald’s along Rhode Island Avenue in DC, according to a Twitter photo on Sunday of her AirTag location. Minutes later, Szybala tweeted that her luggage had left McDonald’s and returned to the apartment complex.
Szybala on Monday shared a picture on Twitter of her bag’s AirTag location at a shopping complex in the city, but after a couple of hours the luggage returned to the apartment complex, she tweeted.
She told The Independent she went back to the apartment complex to track down her luggage. She then received what she described in a tweet as a “sketchy” text message from a delivery driver for United.
The driver said he was planning to deliver her luggage but had brought her bag to another address because it was under a different passenger’s name, according to a screenshot she tweeted.
“It didn’t make any sense. It still doesn’t,” she told The Independent.
Szybala said she phoned the number and the driver told her he was parked around the corner from her, she tweeted. He drove to the apartment complex and Szybala was reunited with her bag, she said in the Twitter thread.
United and Szybala didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment made outside of normal US operating hours. United told The Independent in a statement that the airline was working with its luggage delivery service to understand what happened.
In a statement to Mashable, which also reported on the story, United said: “We’ve been in touch with this customer to discuss this situation and confirm she has received her luggage. The service our baggage delivery vendor provided does not meet our standards and we are investigating what happened to lead to this service failure.”
