Valerie Szybala knew she made the right choice when she accepted United’s offer to deliver her delayed package.
This was the last week of 2022 and thousands of flights were canceled due to bad weather and operational failures, most of them Southwest Airlines. When Szybala landed at his Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., the United app notified him that his bag was missing on his flight from Chicago. It was easier for her to have the airline bring a bag full of holiday gifts directly to her house.
After all, she put an Apple AirTag in her luggage so she could track the bag’s journey. But Shivara could not imagine what would happen next.
“This is where the real confusion begins,” Szybala told Mashable.
When the tagged bag left the airport on Dec. 29, Szybala said it appeared to be delivered several miles away. AirTags are intended to track personal items such as wallets and car keys by sending signals that can be detected by Apple’s Find My network. (Privacy experts are critical of the device’s ability to track people without their consent, including victims of domestic violence.)
Szybala’s bag did not arrive on the 29th. She continued to see it the next day, appearing to settle into the night at the housing complex.
That’s when she started to worry.
The Find My network provided her with the location of the bag, and Szybala decided to go there herself.And so the virality began twitter thread in the saga. At the time of writing, the first tweet in that thread had his 15.5 million views.
Szybala’s experience shows that airlines and their third-party courier services trust to return delayed or lost packages, and that tracking devices are a necessary means for travelers to hold big companies accountable. A lesson about why.
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When Shibala arrived at the apartment complex, she saw and photographed an empty suitcase near the trash can. Panic began. During a text chat with a United customer service representative via the airline’s app, Szybala felt “gaslight.”
a screenshot of exchange Szybala is pleading with officials to clarify why the AirTag indicated the bag was in the apartment complex, as they claimed. “Calm down, the bag is on the delivery service,” said a representative who couldn’t confirm that Mr. Szybala was human.
“When I thought people were stealing my bags and emptying them, I thought, ‘I need to do something,'” she said.
Szybala kept returning to the facility in hopes of finding her bag, but had no luck. At one point, she saw the bag move to McDonald’s.
“Another important update: My luggage’s AirTag has left McDonald’s and is back at the apartment complex being held hostage!” Shibara wrote on Twitter.
As her tweet went viral, Szybala received DMs from people with similar horror stories and insider tips on how to handle packages. Some pointed her to Wheres My Suitcase (sic), a Houston-based company that she uses by multiple airlines. Her Yelp page is covered in bad reviews.
Szybala was told by United that her bag could be tracked on wheresmysuitcase.com, but the website did not update the location of her belongings. She had no way of contacting the courier service directly.
Szybala also said one of the industry insiders told her it was standard procedure to return packages to distribution centers if they could not be delivered. It’s still unclear what the suitcase in question was doing at the mansion.
On her fourth trip to the complex, Szybala received a text from a courier service. The delivery person said he delivered the bag to the wrong person in Virginia and he had to retrieve it. Given the details of the AirTag, Szybala doesn’t believe the story, but he recovered the bag on January 2, three days after he went missing.
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“It doesn’t look like it’s on top to me,” she said.
When Mashable reached out to United Airlines for comment on the situation, the airline said in an email:
United Airlines sent additional updates following the publication of this article. What led to the failure of this service?”
Szybala wrote on Twitter that travelers should consider using tracking devices for their packages. Without it, and without his viral Twitter thread, Szybala probably wouldn’t have his own bag.
In fact, the vacation travel nightmare seems to have convinced other travelers to do the same. Scott Budman for NBC News report on monday Apple AirTags have recently become a bestseller on Amazon.
Szybala also recommended that travelers take photos and inventory their belongings before flying and choose to pick up delayed or lost baggage at the airport rather than delivering it. Still, she believes United is ultimately responsible for what happens to travelers’ luggage, and how the company handles flyers when that happens.
“Of course, this doesn’t change everything for United, but just the amount of attention given to negative press may cause United to appreciate some of these practices,” said Shibara. rice field.
Updated: January 2, 2023 at 3:55 PM PST This article has been updated with a new statement from United Airlines.
