Apple AirTags and Equivalent Bluetooth Tracking Devices (for luggage and other personal items)

13»

Comments

  • Noreen - You likely got the double whammy: lost your luggage, and probably had one of those crappy European Business class seats to boot. That's adding insult to injury. :D

    Hopefully the $1700 was a fair reimbursement amount.

  • GlsdysOrlando, I will initiate a claim when I get home. May I ask, what documentation did you need to submit the claim with the Tauck insurance, receipts from clothes purchased, boarding passes, etc? How would the Tauck insurance know that luggage was physically delayed? Do I put in a claim for my husband and myself together or two individual claims? Any information will be useful. Thank you.

  • Tauck's insurance is going to want a copy of the claim that you filed at the airport for the lost/delayed luggage. My suitcase was totally destroyed between 2 Air France flights. I had a photo of the bag that was taken by and e-mailed to me by the AF pilot on the second flight. Then, my bag never arrived on my 3rd flight (which was on TAP). I filed a claim for the missing bag at the Porto airport, and asked whether I could file a claim for the destroyed bag at the same time (since I had the photo), but was told I could not file that claim until I actually had my bag...and that I would have to go back to the airport to do it (40 euro cab ride each way). The bag arrived at the Porto hotel the next day, but I didn't go back to the airport to file the claim. Anyway...I found the Tauck insurance form very difficult to maneuver, and gave up on it, and just mailed off my claim to Amex's insurance company.

  • Thank you. I know I paid for my trip on my platinum Amex card and I think I can pursue my claim either way. However, this is one of the main reason thst we take out and pay extra for the Tauck insurance. I do have the paperwork from the airline (baggage claim area) that it’s luggage was delayed.

  • Smiling Sam - I wish I had my luggage especially on a trip to Turkey.  Most of the women in my age group wore long black dresses with sleeves and covered their head in scarfs.  Sam, I am sure you have been to Turkey.  Loved the trip but I wasn't a fashion model on this one.  
    The plane ride was just as you stated.  Not worth the money in my opinion should have done this leg in economy.  However, $1700 was better than zero.

  • OurTravels34 sorry for the late answer, all I needed was the receipts for the clothes purchased, it was a while ago but I don't remember having to show boarding passes, at that time the form was easy to do.

  • Thank you. I will fly a claim when I return. I tried to do it while traveling and I refuse to travel with a laptop. These things are hard to do from an iPhone. I don’t want to make any mistakes.

  • Lufthansa bans Apple AirTags:
    https://onemileatatime.com/news/lufthansa-bans-airtags/

    What will they do next - Have a plane equipped with all economy seats and call the front section business, anyway? Oh wait...

  • I don't know how Lufansa is going to enforce that. And if they find that your suitcase has an airtag, what are they doing to do? Open the suitcase and take it out? I guess they could ask you if you have an airtag in your suitcase when you check in, and depend on the traveler's honesty.

  • Inspect each bag with a fleld strength meter?

  • We’ve used the tags on a couple of trips and they are reassuring. So if Lufthansa finds the tags in peoples’ luggage on scanning, they are going to open your bags, cause even more delayed baggage on their airline and cause the customers to think their bag is not on the plane if they remove the tag.
    Can Apple make any statements about the safety? After all, they are so popular now and it would likely have a huge impact on their sales for no really good reason.

  • I think I posted this before. But, on our return from Europe on our ‘non stop’ flight from Zurich to San Francisco we diverted to Chicago for a medical emergency. We always check all bags for return trips, and the bags went to the four winds. They were on two other flights, none on ours. When we got to SFO we went to the baggage service to find our bags. We did not get into the long line, we just tracked our Airtags, picked up our luggage and left. Someone did chase us down to check our claim tags. Those standing in line became instant new Airtag customers when they saw what we did. We have eight of them now … cars, keys, purse, gym bag, fanny pack, even the dog has one.

  • Yes, I even have one hidden in my car. You never know what happens in a big crazy city nowadays such as SF and I’m not kidding.

  • That’s simple. Don’t fly Lufthansa.

  • https://airwaysmag.com/lufthansa-not-bannig-airtags/

    This is the most recent article I have seen on this - stating that Lufthansa has not banned these devices.

  • edited October 2022

    The batteries in an AirTag are quite small but Apple says the batteries will last about a year. That means that the AirTag is not transmitting all the time - it's listening. When an Apple device (iPhone or iPad) comes by which has Bluetooth turned on, the AirTag will hear the Apple device's Bluetooth (and Apple has a special implementation of Bluetooth so the AirTag knows it's an Apple device and not some other brand), it will do a short transimission to the Apple device.

    So Luftansia's excuse for wanting to ban Airtags doesn't make any sense. The AirTags in the luggage hole will not be transmitting anything. Almost everyone who boards the aircraft has a smartphone and almost all of them leave Bluetooth on so they can use their AirPods, even if they put the phone in Airplane mode. So there are a lot of devices with active Bluetooth in the aircraft, and yet Lufthansa doesn't say anything about them.

    I suspect Luftansia's position has nothing to do with radio frequence interference and everything to do with the customers telling Luftansia exactly where their lost bags are.

  • That explains everything.

  • We have flown this year on American, KLM, United, and Swiss. There was no mention by any of them about Air Tags.

  • And we flew on Lufthansa this week, and there was no mention of them.

  • Between the two articles it's all pretty vague. But I have an Android phone so I don't really care. Can't use air tags anyway. Nor is Lufthansa high on my list of airlines.

  • edited October 2022

    So here is a strange Airtag story from our recent Canada tour. My wife and I shipped our luggage to the hotel in Toronto prior to our arrival. Horror stories from Pearson Airport got me nervous, so we sprung for Luggage Forward (great company). I also had airtags in our two suitcases.

    So the bags arrived a little earlier than we did, I got a notification from Luggage Forward, and I also got an email from the hotel telling me they were being stored for us. All good. The tracker for the airtag in each suitcase showed them at the hotel as well.

    So a day later, I happened to glance at the "Find My" app on my phone, and I saw something that made my heart skip a beat...one of our suitcases showed up to be a block away from the hotel, at the nearby sports arena. Then it "moved" to the train station across from the hotel. I immediately called the hotel and spoke with the man who had sent the email confirming their arrival. I asked him what was going on, and he put me on a quick call and confirmed they were still both in the room right behind him.

    I looked at the app again, and lo and behold they were both together in the hotel.

    So apparently those airtags, which connect to nearby bluetooth signals from apple devices, can pick up a stray Iphone bluetooth signal and "travel" with that iphone for no apparent reason. Scared the crap out of me...especially since it was my wife's suitcase that appeared to be the one that was gone...and that wouldn't have worked out well for me!

  • edited October 2022

    Yes. The tags can jump around a bit if they don’t have a good connection to an iPhone or Apple device nearby … like locked in a luggage room, or on a conveyor belt in the bowels of the airport. I’ve watched our bags ‘appear’ to jump all over the airport. When the plane departs it is not uncommon to see the ‘left behind’ (iPhones get turned off) until you get to your new destination airport, and by magic they reappear. We have eight Air Tags, and they are all at home with us.

  • Sealord...NOW you tell me. ;-)

Sign In or Register to comment.