Lost Baggage, User Interfaces and the Customer Experience
Few things frustrate travelers more than lost baggage, and United Airlines certainly tested my patience last week. There were plenty of chances for them to shine in customer service, but their online platform and mobile app ended up being prime examples of what not to do—for both customers and their own service representatives.
Background
I was flying back to Portland from Austin on Friday, during record cold temperatures across the Southwest. Overhead storage in the cabin was packed with travelers’ winter gear—despite requests to wait until all passengers had boarded—which left me, one of the first in group #3, without space for my carry-on. The flight attendant, clearly exasperated, asked for my seat number and said she would take my suitcase to the back. Although I returned to my seat, I was uneasy about not receiving a baggage slip, which she assured me she’d bring shortly.
We landed in Terminal A for a brief layover in Denver, leaving just 20 minutes until my next flight in Terminal B. As we disembarked, I asked the attendants at the front of the plane where to pick up my bag, explaining the situation. Both assured me it had been checked through to my final destination, so I headed to my next flight—though that nagging inner voice told me this might be the last time I’d see my bag. It’s never wrong.
No Return Bag at PDX
Sure enough, I landed in Portland, and my bag was nowhere to be found. Normally, I keep an AirTag in my bag, but this time it was still in my larger suitcase at home. With no way to track it, I reported the bag missing to two support staff at the baggage area. They filed a “Delayed Bag” report and provided me with a receipt, but the process was frustrating. Even though I had all the necessary details, they struggled to locate my flights and had difficulty filing the report on the kiosk at the airport. Despite confirming my information multiple times, I later discovered several errors in the report—errors that could have been avoided with better-designed software featuring dropdown menus or multiple-choice options.
Examples of this were:
- File Reference Number from the Delayed Baggage system DOES NOT auto populate to the United Airlines webpage to produce the customer copy. As I wasn’t given a baggage tag, this becomes the official unique identifier in the system and should NEVER be typed into an isolated system manually, but should be auto-populated to remove human error. Yep, you guessed it, they typed it in incorrectly in my copy.
- Bag Description: Why would you not have a multiple choice here:
- Soft-side Carry-on
- Hard-side Carry-on
- Makeup Case
- Oversized
- Hard-side Check-in
- So on and so forth, then end with “Other”
- After interviewing and gathering information about the customers suitcase and contents, at least have that information in the print receipt so they know you actually filled it out.
Yes, after confirming three times my suitcase was hard-sided, she typed in Soft-sided. sigh…
They advised me to call the next morning, even though I’d filled out the report, as there is significant issues with the “Delayed Bagged Report” System, so this was the recommended practice for any customer with a missing bag.
Weekend Call Adventures
On Saturday morning, I called in for assistance and was rerouted to the AI chatbot, which operates through the mobile app but ultimately connects to iPhone’s text messaging. This was concerning, as it’s quite limited and eventually redirects you to an SMS conversation with a support representative. The representative I was connected with was unprepared to handle my report file ID and instead requested a baggage tag—something I would have received if the attendant in Austin had followed through on her promise.
Even though I provided the official File Reference ID, the representative ignored it entirely. Instead, he repeatedly asked why I hadn’t been given a baggage tag and even suggested I might have forgotten my bag on the plane. After firmly clarifying the situation and getting him to drop that line of questioning, we moved forward. He filled out another baggage report in a different system, documented all identifying details about my bag and its contents, and issued me a new reference number to track the status of my lost luggage.
The entire process, conducted via text, took over 70 minutes. I was offered a $100 travel voucher for my trouble and asked to complete a form on a separate URL, which required my original flight confirmation number.
This prompted the following questions:
- Why did the “Delayed Baggage Report” reference ID not matter to the Delayed Baggage team referenced on the form, who seemed to have no history about the report and which required me to submit a whole new tracking process? Why did I stay at the airport and fill the first form out??
- There wasn’t a request for my confirmation number, any ID from me, etc. as we submitted this form. The new report had a different reference number which was 5 characters, but not my flight confirmation number- yes, the DBA brain is spinning as I try to figure out the primary keys in the tables and how they all reference and why.
- There wasn’t any corresponding information that tied the report I did at the airport. It was obvious the two systems weren’t connected, which resulted in me having to repeat everything again, which is rarely a good customer service experience for anyone.
Multi-factor Heck
Once I left the interaction with the representative, I logged into the URL for United to submit my claim form and then I’d be reimbursed for all the difficulty I was going through. Now anyone trying this, will first have to log into their United account. This requires multi-factor authentication – codes texted to a contact and verification that it was you who logged in. Once you finally do get logged in, it will also return you to the home page and you will have to update the URL, which will time your session out, so you’ll have to open a new tab and then go to the link. All and all, not as easy as anyone would like it to be.
If you’re traveling and doing this on a mobile device, you have my sympathy, but seriously, if it’s just to submit a lost baggage form, there should be a better solution to submit the form without all the account log in and verification. Again, this is a customer that’s going through a pretty rough time and just needs to submit some additional information, so the confirmation ID and last name should be ENOUGH.
Once you finally get into the site, you find out that the confirmation number for “Delayed Baggage” option which is at the top of the page, is different than the confirmation number you’ll use for the “Lost Baggage” mid-page. Although these systems are all part of the “lifecycle” of baggage- carry-on, check-in, curb-side, delayed, lost, unclaimed, etc. for these two options on this page, they are part of two VERY different systems with different unique identifiers when locating a record.
The confirmation ID I received from my first call was used for the top of the page, but the Delayed Baggage File Reference ID is what was needed for the “Lost Baggage” section and wouldn’t work for the Delayed Baggage.
My DBA brain could not wrap my head around this and I had to make a third call into customer support as I hadn’t imagined their system could be that discombobulated. The mobile experience is definitely more frustrating than the website, which the interface is more descriptive, so I definitely recommend skipping the mobile interface for any baggage claim issues. I’ve always believed outside of placement for ease of viewing, the actual wording and such should be exactly the same in the mobile version as the desktop to stop this type of confusion and United’s site is a great example of this type of failure.
Even if the systems remain separate due to some unforeseen issue or limitation in projects, etc, there should be a way to search on each of the unique identifiers from the three systems and have them accepted to ease customer frustration. If their frustration level isn’t already at a high level with a lost bag, it will definitely be over the top after using this system.
How Much Did You Pack?
After successfully logging into the claim form site for the lost bag, I was required to provide my flight details, describe what had happened, and list the contents of the suitcase along with their estimated value.
Rather than offering a streamlined, spreadsheet-like interface for entering details—such as:
| Item | Brand | Description | Value | Receipt (Optional) |
| Jacket | Free People | Black Wool Jacket | $190 | N/A |
| Shirt | … | |||
To add items to the claim form, you had to click an “Add Item” button for each entry and manually type in the details. The form displayed the most expensive items in a heat map format, with larger text for higher-value entries. This process was incredibly tedious, requiring each item to be added individually. Even for a short two-day trip, this quickly turned into a cluttered and overwhelming mess of text.
While I was working on the form, I kept receiving alerts from the SMS chat with United, saying, “Since we haven’t heard back from you, we will now close our conversation.” This forced me to repeatedly reopen the chat, interrupting the already frustrating process.
Once I finally completed the claim form and submitted it to receive my $100 voucher and initiate the search for my missing bag, I got a follow-up message asking if I was “still connected and wanted to continue.” I replied, “I’m done with the form and do not want to speak with anyone else from United ever again.”
The support representative apologized for the inconvenience and ended the conversation. However, about 10 minutes later, the chatbot reappeared, asking if they should discontinue the chat.
All hail our AI overlords… 🙂
The bottom line is that keeping customers happy is already a challenge, but many organizations seem to be racing to alienate them faster, hoping we’ll eventually grow numb to the frustration. What bothers me most is when the issues stem from poor user experience in customer service and software. There were so many opportunities to simplify this process, yet it left me speaking to someone three times over three days, rehashing the same problem without making any meaningful progress toward resolving when a few changes could have made it so much easier:
- Connect systems effectively and share data that will make it easier for customers so they don’t have to repeat everything to each representative. Efficiency has a beauty all it’s own. It was quite obvious to me how disconnected the baggage system was from the delayed baggage and that both were disconnected from the lost baggage system. Anyone who has spent even 15 minutes at a baggage carousel knows, there’s a lot of lost baggage and much of its due to the software that’s handling it.
- Use drop downs and auto-populate whenever you’re able to remove manual entries whenever possible.
- K.I.S.S. – Yeah, keep it simple. Functionality and effectiveness over beauty. After this weekend, I would say United has neither, so that’s worse for both the employees and the customers.
The saddest part of this whole experience, is the identifying feature on my dark gray suitcase that was documented in each of the systems is a very large, (3″ X 5″) sticker right under the suitcase handle. I was sure this would tell them EXACTLY where to send it to reconnect with the owner:
