Charged EUR 37 for 1kg over at check-in (total 24kg)

[Deleted member 9370]

Oops, sorry, with respect to throwing in the hatchet, I can confirm I have done the following:

- Told friend they should have taken train to FRA and not interlined
- Told friend their lousy spiel of mentioning were let on 3kg over last year was pathetic
- Told friend they should consider flying EK next time
- Told friend rules are there for a reason
- Told friend if they don't like it they should buy a jet or drive
- Told friend it's not hard to wear an extra 1kg of clothes when checking in
- Told friend to bring their own scales next time
- Told friend to alledge calibration of check-in scales incorrect
- Told friend discretion does not come as standard
- Told friend it was BA and QF has nothing to do with it

What next? Write to someone?

Kooky,
You forgot one:
-Told friend to go to Bunnings, buy some wood, build a bridge, get over it!

 

[simongr]

It is not the friend complaining remember.

 

[medhead]

Oops, sorry, with respect to throwing in the hatchet, I can confirm I have done the following:

- Told friend they should have taken train to FRA and not interlined

Actually no one told you they should take a train to FRA. You raised living near FRA, I just mentioned that HAM is near FRA (closer than LHR at any rate) and is an easy train ride away. No direction to take the train to FRA involve in that.

Yep, maybe so, but how is anyone in continental Europe going to fly QF without interlining if booking at Qantas unless they live near FRA?

 

[anat0l]

Oops, sorry, with respect to throwing in the hatchet, I can confirm I have done the following:

- Told friend they should have taken train to FRA and not interlined
- Told friend their lousy spiel of mentioning were let on 3kg over last year was pathetic
- Told friend they should consider flying EK next time
- Told friend rules are there for a reason
- Told friend if they don't like it they should buy a jet or drive
- Told friend it's not hard to wear an extra 1kg of clothes when checking in
- Told friend to bring their own scales next time
- Told friend to alledge calibration of check-in scales incorrect
- Told friend discretion does not come as standard
- Told friend it was BA and QF has nothing to do with it

What next? Write to someone?

Well, I'd normally expect a lot more of you, but I'll let you slide this time.

 

[ajw373]

Checked in at LHR T3 F counter last week.....family of 5 traveling with BA in F.

Coming to the end of a 5 week holiday so the bags were a little porky - baggage allowance for each passenger was three bags at 32kgs per bag. Therefore, our party had a combined allowance of 480kg's.

We had a total of 5 bags and one bag came in 1kg over 32kg. The agent requested that I take the bag off the belt & transfer 1 KG to another bag.

Some what amused by her demand but compliant....took the bag off the belt transferred two jumpers to another bag, strapped them back up & put them back on the belt. The offending bag was now under the 32kg limit but now the other bag was over she made me do the same again:evil:

Given the queue that was forming behind me & what appeared to me to be an absolute joke of procedure......I was showing the signs of getting upset. The agent apologised and explained that belt would not work if the weight applied was in-excess of 32kg.

Who knows if this is true! She seemed to be telling the truth but a little part of me can't believe the tolerance is that tight or their scales are that precise.

Was not my idea of a First Class check-in

In fareness 32kg is a max limit for most airlines/airports for safety reasons, so if not complied with and a handler gets hurt there can be trouble. First class economy class makes no difference what so ever.

As to the OP the charge to me sounds about the same amount that BA charges for being over 23kg but under 32kg. Again a hard and fast BA rule.

 

[nonscenic]

Not directly related, but the scales in Australia are always calibrated and governed by the National Measurement Act, and have these staff check the scales to make sure they are compliant.

I recall some issue that the calibration in Australia was not being maintained as per the Act at some airports, and that the same suitcase indicated different weights at different scales in the same terminal. Like speed cameras I would have thought 1kg over might be within the range of instrumental accuracy (the airlines and the passengers).
However if the excess weight is more than 1kg I think airlines should charge accordingly to be fair to all passengers.
As other posts have commented, you have to wonder why some people feel they have to take the kitchen sink with them when they fly. Which reminds me of being in the check-in queue at Toronto behind a family who were resisting the check in staff's refusal to allow them to carry 3 * 1 gallon flasks of fruit juice for their children in their hand luggage:!:. I can well see the pressures for checkin staff to "step outside standard procedures" in maintaining airline policy on baggage.
To be fair to the rest, why should staff let others get away with excess baggage for free?

 

[Kefci2000]

In fareness 32kg is a max limit for most airlines/airports for safety reasons, so if not complied with and a handler gets hurt there can be trouble. First class economy class makes no difference what so ever.

As to the OP the charge to me sounds about the same amount that BA charges for being over 23kg but under 32kg. Again a hard and fast BA rule.

Yes (afaik) this is definately max for OHS reasons (as suggested above)

No ifs no buts no I am WP, CL, Concorde etc etc

 

[ajw373]

Well if you see the original quotes given by the checkin staff it was QF that was making the rules. That's what Joe Public gets told, I know you may know some of the politics behind the scenes that cause things like this to occur but the damage is done, right? If QF wants stick a QF codeshare on the ticket then at least take some responsibility in things. I'm sure having QF is completely irrelevant and I deserve the rulebook to be thrown at me but it's simply a European person booking a ticket through Qantas.de in the end for their Australian holiday. I already had to put up with the complaints about the A$20 charged to pick your seat when previously they could just request it from the call centre. Aw man, who cares, it's done now. If there ever is a next time they can just pay E2000 sale price to fly QF Y+ to Aus unlike the Aussie suckers who pay that to fly Y to Europe. Where QF really cleans up is selling Aussies overpriced tickets, not charging Europeans excess baggage ;-)

Righteo, simple way to find out who's charge it was. Ask your friend to have a look at the excess baggage receipt. Now was it for 1 leg or both legs. If both legs then there should have been a slip given to staff at Heathrow. The amount charged seems a tad odd to me, and as I said above is about what BA charge for going over their 23kg bag limit. The cost for 1kg on Qantas should have actually been about 5 euro more. Even so, as others have pointed out they had more baggage than the allowance, so no reason to complain if they get charged for going over.

 

[kooky]

Righteo, simple way to find out who's charge it was. Ask your friend to have a look at the excess baggage receipt. Now was it for 1 leg or both legs. If both legs then there should have been a slip given to staff at Heathrow. The amount charged seems a tad odd to me, and as I said above is about what BA charge for going over their 23kg bag limit. The cost for 1kg on Qantas should have actually been about 5 euro more. Even so, as others have pointed out they had more baggage than the allowance, so no reason to complain if they get charged for going over.

From friend:

The receipt was stuck to the back of the QF30 LHR-MEL BP (1x BP thru to MEL). At LHR the BP was scanned (not fed) at the gate , the baggage was not mentioned. At HKG the gate did not have a scan system, the BP had to be fed thru a machine and the gate staff ripped the receipt off and kept it so that the BP could go through. Thus, no receipt.

From kooky:

Bear in mind again it's me that's annoyed here at making the QF recommendation, not the traveller, thus they did not think to request to keep it.

If nobody asking for a receipt at LHR means BA took the money and said it's QF to blame, then this is fraud or theft by deception, name it what you will. But oh well, the receipt is somewhere in a bin at HKG so I'll never know. D'oh!

 

[amaroo]

I recall some issue that the calibration in Australia was not being maintained as per the Act at some airports, and that the same suitcase indicated different weights at different scales in the same terminal. Like speed cameras I would have thought 1kg over might be within the range of instrumental accuracy (the airlines and the passengers).
However if the excess weight is more than 1kg I think airlines should charge accordingly to be fair to all passengers.
As other posts have commented, you have to wonder why some people feel they have to take the kitchen sink with them when they fly. Which reminds me of being in the check-in queue at Toronto behind a family who were resisting the check in staff's refusal to allow them to carry 3 * 1 gallon flasks of fruit juice for their children in their hand luggage:!:. I can well see the pressures for checkin staff to "step outside standard procedures" in maintaining airline policy on baggage.
To be fair to the rest, why should staff let others get away with excess baggage for free?

With an allowance of 480kg's:shock: I thought we showed great restraint by limiting it to 5 bags at around 103kg's:!:

Could have taken the sink & the rest of the kitchen - in 32kg's segments:mrgreen:

 

[Flashback]

From friend:

The receipt was stuck to the back of the QF30 LHR-MEL BP (1x BP thru to MEL). At LHR the BP was scanned (not fed) at the gate , the baggage was not mentioned. At HKG the gate did not have a scan system, the BP had to be fed thru a machine and the gate staff ripped the receipt off and kept it so that the BP could go through. Thus, no receipt.

From kooky:

Bear in mind again it's me that's annoyed here at making the QF recommendation, not the traveller, thus they did not think to request to keep it.

If nobody asking for a receipt at LHR means BA took the money and said it's QF to blame, then this is fraud or theft by deception, name it what you will. But oh well, the receipt is somewhere in a bin at HKG so I'll never know. D'oh!

The receipt on the back of the BP would have been the actual baggage receipt. The receipt for payment of excess baggage would have been separate.

 

[kooky]

The receipt on the back of the BP would have been the actual baggage receipt. The receipt for payment of excess baggage would have been separate.

The receipt for payment was the size of the boarding pass and it was stapled to the boarding pass. That's what was ripped off at HKG

 

[rechoboam]

1. If people didn't use the socks, why keep on supplying them to everyone?
2. Your free baggage allowance is 23kgs, not anything else.
3. Wasn't really able to be done before the fee was implemented anyway, so really it's a new thing that NB's and non-FF members have the choice to do.
4. Well who does offer free exit rows these days for their lower tiered FF'ers? (really unsure)
5. This was also due to alot of passengers travelling on 'budget' and 'full service' airlines who don't have a baggage allowance, automatically getting a free baggage allowance by 'interlining' the baggage. If you want your bags to go through, pay the premium and have it in the one booking, or book within the allicance.
6. What's this broken online checkin? If flying BA on the 1st leg, well isn't that BA's problem?

I agree. Some of the complaints remind me of Louis CKs rant about people who complain that in flight internet sometimes doesnt work. Google "louis CK everythings great". Qantas is a safe, reliable (within constraints of weather and mechanics, which also relates to safety) reasonably clean and painless airline. Its hardly the worlds most stressful experience. My grandparents weight limits would have been pretty bad when they flew germany/turkey/bahrain?/pakistan/bombay etc etc on some tiny plane to get to Australia in the 40s! Now that would have been a painful trip.

...

EDIT: the scales are digital. Tolerances would not be +/- 5% they would probably be in grams. Oh darn iphone that didnt exit properly but anyway...

 

[TheInsider]

The receipt for payment was the size of the boarding pass and it was stapled to the boarding pass. That's what was ripped off at HKG

The actual receipt wouldn't be on the back of a BP. This would just generally be QF's copy of the MPD. The receipt would've been given to the passenger in a different means.

 

[medhead]

EDIT: the scales are digital. Tolerances would not be +/- 5% they would probably be in grams. Oh darn iphone that didnt exit properly but anyway...

There are statutory tolerances, which would be very different to the precision of the equipment. For example as the speeding analogy has been used the Australian design rules for vehicles have a +/- 10% allowance for speedos.

 

[ajw373]

The receipt for payment was the size of the boarding pass and it was stapled to the boarding pass. That's what was ripped off at HKG

The story keeps changing. First it was stuck to the back, now it was stapled and the size of the boarding pass.

By all rights if it was a Qantas excess baggage charge the 'voucher' would have been attached to the boarding pass and would have looked like a ticket of old, however it should have been spotted and removed at the gate on the first Qantas flight. Ie London, scan or no scan. The passenger however would have still had a seperate booklet type thing which would have formed their copy of the charge.

 

[kooky]

The story keeps changing. First it was stuck to the back, now it was stapled and the size of the boarding pass.

It does because everytime someone asks something, I have to go and ask the friend another question more detailed than the last. I assume colloquially you could say something is stuck to something that is actually stapled, although granted in this case stuck was probably a bad word to use, sorry about that. I don't think I made previous reference to the size before I said it was the size of a boarding pass, though.

 

[kooky]

By all rights if it was a Qantas excess baggage charge the 'voucher' would have been attached to the boarding pass and would have looked like a ticket of old, however it should have been spotted and removed at the gate on the first Qantas flight. Ie London, scan or no scan. The passenger however would have still had a seperate booklet type thing which would have formed their copy of the charge.

I just sent friend links of the two types of IATA tickets, it was neither of those. It was a form that was filled out by hand, and it was a carbon copy duplicate (or triplicate). It was very thin. Nothing was asked at LHR at checkin.

 

[Kefci2000]

I just sent friend links of the two types of IATA tickets, it was neither of those. It was a form that was filled out by hand, and it was a carbon copy duplicate (or triplicate). It was very thin. Nothing was asked at LHR at checkin.

Your friend is very tolerant.

I suggest we all get over it like your friend obviously has......:mrgreen:

 

[kooky]

Your friend is very tolerant.

I suggest we all get over it like your friend obviously has......:mrgreen:

Absolutely, I was over it several days ago, and my friend is now getting agitated every time I ask about receipt!

Everything aside though, I do start seriously to wonder if BA does pocket the cash while blaming it on Qantas, and if anyone audits where the cash goes. I guess they do, surely. There's probably someone employed just to watch where the lots of E37 1kg fines go. I'm spewing my friend does not have that receipt because if it could be proven BA were pocketing it I would seriously be having kittens right now. Anyway, it's lost, which means I got zip & I'm joining the ranks of those that are over it .. we can get back to talking about that barman at the Sydney QP!