First time passenger on Turkish airlines, will never fly with them again. They lost my luggage and have no system to track, locate, retrieve, or compensate me for the loss. I was frequently lied to about what I should expect and misled by their rediculous call centers.
Flew with them round trip from Los Angeles to Dubai. On return flight:
First leg of the trip was 7 hours delayed
Second leg of trip was 3 hours delayed
On the return trip, security at Dubai airport made me check my carry-on for which Turkish airlines charged me an additional $200 USD.
On arrival, my luggage did not make it.
Probably 20 other people also had luggage that did not arrive, and Turkish Airlines officials treated it like it was just part of the daily routine. To try to unsuccessfully find my lost property, here is how their system works:
1. You file a lost luggage report, stood in line for 2 hours to do this because so many people lost their luggage
2. If your luggage does not fit the most common luggage descriptions, it is vaguely described in their system.
3. They say they will keep you updated on statuses, but no one will ever call you.
4. If you call their luggage service, the default welcome message is "all our operators are currently assisting other customers, please hold." If it happens that their only operator is actually assisting other people, then your call is redirected to a numbered voicemail with no description of what you should say. So you simply have to call back and go through the same process.
5. When I actually talked to a service representative, they say there are no updates on my property and they ask me for more details about that bag. I assumed they wanted more details to update the database, but every time I called they wanted the details again, so I'm not sure what they did with the additional details. Every time I called the only details they had on file was that my bag was "black" and contained "camera equipment" no matter how many details I gave them their information on my property never changed.
6. If you ask to talk to someone else such as a manager about the situation they will not transfer you, but they might give you various international numbers you can call which usually turned out to be fax numbers which didn't work.
7. They claim to have a luggage tracking system, but explain that theirs essentially doesn't really do anything, so they simply wait for an unclaimed bag to turn up somewhere.
8. This will go on for a month until they will not admit the property was likely stolen while in their possession and will turn it over to an insurance company which will make you jump through many loopholes and then ultimately not compensate you.
I never file these kind of company complaints, but my experience with Turkish Airlines has been horrendous. I am more likely to be grateful to airline companies for the amazing service they provide by taking people all over the world. But I saw the dark side with Turkish, I encourage you to avoid them and choose an alternate company even if the ticket prices are substantially higher to choose another.
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