When an airline tries to charge you $500 in baggage fees, don't get mad, get educated!
Do you know the horror of being presented with a $500 excess baggage fee at the airline baggage counter? That's what LuggageLimits.com founder Luke Dudley experienced at the airport a few years ago on a return trip home while travelling abroad. His personal experience and other stories like this promoted him to launch a website to help other travellers avoid getting mad at surprise baggage fees.
Like so many other airline travellers these days, Luke incurred an astronomical checked baggage fee. However, when this seasoned traveller made the mistake of assuming his checked baggage allowance would be the same as his previous international flight with the same airline, when in fact the baggage allowance was halved, he was asked to pay a fee based on 30kg of his excess baggage; a fee of about $500. An experience like this can ruin a great vacation!
Fortunately, Luke made a mad dash to locate his friends who allowed him to arrange shipment of his excess baggage via sea mail and save around $350. Once the anger and feeling of stupidity subsided, what followed this stinging experience was a philosophy of "don't get mad, get educated."
Luke embarked on a virtual journey to demystify the airline industry's new multi-billion dollar revenue source that baggage fees have become. Based on the theory that airline baggage policies were made purposely complex, difficult to navigate, and required extensive reading in order to correctly decipher, he built a website that allowed users to find the exact information they required through a simple search.
LuggageLimits.com was launched and Luke's site soon grew to incorporate all the different ticket classes and varying baggage policies of 175 airlines. Furthermore, the site is now launching Android and I-phone applications in time to help travellers during the busy December travel season, with slated plans to soon incorporate a 'Baggage Questions' forum in order to further help fellow travellers get the answers to this vital cost saving information.
Since the site's inception, Luke has received hundreds of emails with stories of woe similar to his own, some of which that have resulted in unresolved disputes for overcharges by the airlines. Fortunately, many of the emails received by the site are from pro-active travellers that are seeking specialized baggage information. Either way, it pays to be prepared.
With hundreds of thousands of passenger flights each day, travellers all over the world are seeking baggage information. With each airline website displaying this information with a different layout, LuggageLimits.com offers a uniform way of presenting these policies.
"Airlines count baggage fees as a large share of operating revenue, so these fees are here to stay. The best option for travellers is to be educated about what the airline's baggage fees and weight limits are and plan accordingly," says Luke. "Fellow travellers, know thy limits!"
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