Congratulations to Mirel Baumgarten, who in 2020 used my formal DOT complaint template to report Turkish delivering bags 31 hours late and arbitrarily withholding compensation in violation of US law and international treaty. DOT today cited Mirel in a Consent Order with Turkish, which had to admit its wrongful acts and pay a total of $1.3m (both for delaying refunds after COVID-19 schedule changes and cancellations, and for arbitrarily limiting mishandled bag reimbursements).
DOT summarizes the violation: Turkish Airlines “arbitrarily limited reimbursement for delayed or lost baggage to a maximum amount of $50 USD payment per day for a maximum of six days regardless of the content consumers submitted in their claims.” But, DOT explains, under the Montreal Convention, an airline may not limit its liability for expenses related to delayed baggage to any amount lower than 1,288 SDRs (currently about $1,670). See Consent Order page 5.
If you enjoy this sort of thing, Mirel’s complaint shows the kind of nonsense airlines all too often inflict on passengers. Mirel reported bags delivered 31 hours late (complaint page 12) and provides proof with timestamps, yet Turkish oddly categorized the baggage delay as less than 24 hours (not that that would eliminate or even reduce reimbursement under governing treaty and law). Mirel was traveling for a wedding, had to buy expensive replacement clothes to attend, and had receipts documenting the expenditure. (See complaint page 11.) Turkish refused to consider Mirel’s evidence, saying the only relevant factor was “the framework of the rules” which purportedly say the Turkish rep “cannot re-evaluate your case” (page 10). When Mirel cited the specific treaty that required reimbursement of all reasonable expenses subject to the treaty’s cap, disallowing the limitation Turkish proposed, the Turkish rep remarked that no further discussion was possible, “we do not have phone service”, and the specified amount was “our final offer.” Most consumers would give up. Kudos to Mirel for sticking with it, telling the DOT, and thereby causing DOT to include this matter in its broader investigation of Turkish.
The DOT’s $1.3m settlement with Turkish is substantial, but that entire amount goes to the US Treasury. Not a penny flows to the passengers who received arbitrarily reduced reimbursements from Turkish. Both DOT and Turkish know the names and contact information of affected passengers. I’d like to see Turkish affirmatively provide every affected passenger with the full amount shown in receipts previously submitted, plus interest.
Other affected Turkish customers should be emboldened by this consent order to demand their full documented loss, no matter any prior protestation by Turkish that its policies called for paying less. I don’t know if Turkish customer service representatives are trained to honor and pay those claims. If not, Turkish customers could contact the attorneys who represented Turkish in this matter, David Endersbee and Barbara Marrin of KMA Zuckert, who should be in a position to press Turkish staff to pay claims consistent with the consent order.