If you are travelling abroad, lost or delayed baggage could be an expensive affair. Even buying basic clothes, shoes, charger, toiletries etc for a day would be much more expensive than here in India. It’s thus important to have adequate insurance cover for your luggage before leaving the country.
How to buy a lost baggage insurance policy?
Fortunately, most travel insurance plans cover lost and delayed baggage as well. However, the cover varies from plan to plan. Check with your travel insurance company for details. Reliance travel insurance, ICICI and TATA AIG, all offer lost or delayed baggage cover with their travel insurance. But not in all plans.
Get Property Irregularity Report (PIR).
In the case your bag is missing, contact the airline staff immediately and ask for a PIR. Don’t leave the baggage claim area without a PIR. It’s required to file a claim.
Keep boarding passes and luggage tags safe for all the passengers.
When you file a claim, you might need to provide your boarding pass and luggage tags. It helps you prove to the insurance company that you actually checked in your bag.
Don’t give up.
At first, most insurance companies just try to find some condition and refuse the claim. That is how they work. Keep following up. If your case is genuine, they should ultimately pay. Conditions and policies aside.
Don’t forget to seek a claim from the airlines as well.
Most airlines provide on the spot cash. Generally while they give you the PIR document. And it’s negotiable. Some airlines might offer you a higher value airlines voucher. Compare what’s worth more for you. They might not pay you for return flights to India in case of delayed baggage.
Keep a trackr in every bag.
You don’t have to show this to the airline staff or insurance company. But it’s good to know where your bags are. Luggage trackrs are tiny little inexpensive devices that you can put in your bag. It can show you the location of your bag in case it goes missing.
If you have travel insurance coverage on your travel luggage, you will get only 40% of the worth what you declare you had lost. I lost a worth of 60,000 Rs and I got 25,000 Rs. only. Airlines or insurance will make sure you run around for a while before you get your compensation.
While coming back to India, my international airlines(one of the 3 middle east carriers) lost my luggage and fortunately, I was covered with 3rd party comprehensive travel insurance (which covers pretty much for all possible events that can happen during a business/vacation trip including accidental death, home burglary, hijack, health, passport etc.) by paying a premium of 8,000 Rs for 75 days of duration.
Airlines took 45 days to issue a letter which is required to claim the compensation from your insurance company. They will make sure you haven’t got any more time left in your life to follow up by delaying or not answering. They won’t help you to get compensation until you turn pest. It is ridiculous that they legally need 21 days before they declare the baggage has been lost.
In my case, I had a choice to claim the comp either from airlines or from the insurance company. I am still not sure of differences it makes, but in either case you will be the loser as you do not get adequate compensation to buy your lost stuff.