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Sothwest Fried my Laptop

eutychus55
Explorer C

My wife and I very rarely fly and we had heard good things about Southwest, so we were very dissappointed by our recent experience. We were about 10 minutes from boarding when an announcement was made that the plane was full and that we would have to check our bags because there wouldn't be any room in the overheads. There was no time to repack anything and my laptop was in the baggae being checked. If we had had time, or I had known that we would have been required to check our bags I never would have packed it in there. To make a long story short, when I got home and tried my laptop the next morning, the screen had been fried and it was completely unusable! I wrote to them as they offerred two $50 vouchers on future flights, but as we fly so rarely they are pretty useless to us. Besides the fact that this experience has rather soured us on flying Southwest again anyway!

 

What further makes me mad is that other passengers who were boarding after us were allowed to take carry-on baggage with them and store in it in the overhead! Why were they not told they had to check their baggage???

 

Is it too much to ask Southwest to make good on damage that they caused and would have been avoided if we had been allowed to take our carry-ons with us as others were?

3 REPLIES 3

Re: Sothwest Fried my Laptop

dfwskier
Aviator A

How do you suppose that SW "fried" your laptop?

 

Perhaps you should contact customer relations to discuss the matter : 855-234-4654

Re: Sothwest Fried my Laptop

Shellbell_76377
Explorer B

Customer relations aren't helpful at all. All they will say is sorry

Re: Sothwest Fried my Laptop

jksobonya
Aviator A

Hi,

 

Just trying to understand the sequence of events. You say that Southwest made you check your luggage at the gate because they were out of overhead bin space. And yet - your laptop was in this bag? This would mean that you took this bag through TSA, which requires you to unpack your laptop when you go through security. Are you saying that you did this, put the laptop back in your bag, and then when you went to the gate they checked your luggage and you did not have time to take your laptop out? If it were me, I would have had them wait 60 seconds so you could take your laptop out of the bag that had to be checked, at the very least. 

 

I also don't know how the laptop could have been 'fried', as you say, but I carry my small electronics with me on the plane nearly always. I've never traveled with a laptop via air so I can't comment on the fragility of laptops in checked bags. 

 

Also: Is it possible that your bag exceeded the size requirements? That could be one reason why you had to check your bag, and others did not. But if you were "10 minutes from boarding", I don't see how the overhead could have been full  -- because no one would have even been on the plane yet aside from those who were already on it from the previous flight, which in my experience, is typically a handful to a dozen people (but could be more). 

 

--Jessica