Laptop Stolen, Crowd Source Justice!
photo courtesy of Simon Law under Creative Commons License BY-SA
For those who don’t know, Casey’s laptop, a $3300 Macbook Pro, was stolen out of her luggage after our return from Las Vegas this weekend. Our luggage actually was delayed/missing for a day which makes the theft all the more suspicious. When it was finally delivered, the bag was half-open and dented, so clearly someone broke into it. The laptop is her (and mine) primary means of making a living as a video producer, and contains much sensitive corporate and financial information, as well as the “keys” to our online kingdom.
Now, we have changed all our accounts and filed a claim with Air Canada, as well as with the police and our insurance. However, Air Canada does not supply any direct way to contact and receive updates for these claims. Instead, upon submitting the online claim form, you receive a message informing you it will take 30 business days to respond to our claim. Again, there is NO other way to address these issues with Air Canada.
This is unacceptable in the case of a theft, where every day decreases the chances of finding an answer.
Realistically, we know we probably won’t get the laptop back. I mean if the person who took the laptop SOMEHOW hears about all this and decides to call/mail us and/or return it, no questions will be asked, and everyone gets a happy ending. But we know that is not going to happen …
And while some have suggested raising funds for us to buy a new laptop, we really can’t accept that either. There are so many people out there who need your help before us. We rather you give money to them on behalf of us.
But what I am hoping you can help us with is reaching senior management of Air Canada to address the ridiculous treatment they are giving customers who are caught up in what is a worst case scenario. Thomas Leroux sent me to a nice post about how Air Canada’s CEO Montie Brewer is open to this kind of discussion; we would love to be put in touch with him via e-mail or Facebook.
We want to ask how would he or his VPs feel if their valuable luggage was violated and those who they have entrusted to care for it provide no open lines of communication to let them stay on top of the situation. It is no secret that so many people are dissatisfied with their treatment by airlines, but to have a most fundamental service broken, that is shameful. And given the feelings of being victimized that this kind of event generates, why would they leave their customers out in the cold?
So if you, or your friends, or your friends’ friends can let us begin a proper dialogue with Air Canada about this situation, please reach out to Casey (Facebook, Twitter, Pownce) or myself (Facebook, Twitter, Pownce). Hopefully, if we can’t have a happy ending, we can have an “improved” ending with regular updates on our claim.
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I suggest an old Consumerist.com trick: find out the CEO/CFO/Board of Directors’ names and write to them. Consumerist calls it an Executive Email Carpet Bomb, and it tends to get the attention of the company more effectively than the publicized methods.
So for Air Canada’s CEO it would possibly be: montie.brewer@aircanada.com, brewer.montie@aircanada.com, or other variations.
This page has names of all the top brass: http://www.aircanada.com/en/about/media/bio/index.html
Bastards!
Good use of the crowd.
Further to Udayan’s point, a 2 second google shows the format is firstname.lastname@aircanada.ca (not com)
Good luck. Wish I knew someone who could help.
Could you contact Apple? Would they be able to trace through serial numbers & updates? Adobe CS suite and Final Cut Pro contact the server with ID information, don’t they? Could you get an IP address?
That’s horrible. I’m email the top brass right now! Good luck and hang in there.
Oh no! So sorry this happened! I found this information for Montie Brewer, maybe you already have it. I really hope you get a response.
montiebrewer@aircanada.ca
Air Canada Centre 1271
PO Box 14000
Postal Station Airport
Dorval, QC
H4Y 1H4
FAX: 514-422-4945
Dam…
Hey Rudy,
I’m sorry to hear that you’ll have to jump through some hoops to get any sort of answer from Air Canada. The sad truth is that the exec’s probably won’t care or do anything for you as it seems that this type of behavior may seem routine for them, criminal or not. I hope to see some sort of mention of this in a future episode of Galacticast!
oh man that sucks.
Hey Rudy and Casey
My husband Des had a similar situation with Air Canada a couple of years ago when someone in baggage rifled through his bags and stole his camera. For the longest time AC refused to refund him for the stolen camera, citing certain Government transport laws. Well, Des looked up the laws they were hiding behind and found AC’s interpretation of them completely wrong. So he wrote to Canada’s Ministry of transport and got them involved in the case. They sided with Des and commanded that AC refund him the cost of the camera. It took about a year for it to finally get resolved and even then AC wrote him a letter saying it was against their official policy and therefore a precedent should not be set. I’ll try to get you the names and addresses of the people Des contacted.
I wish you much luck in getting this resolved. It infuriates me how AC can expect not to be held accountable for their own staff during work hours!!
Thanks you guys especially for applying your web-fu - Epic in Zadi’s case ;-).
Kicking myself that I should have googled it, but realized I wouldn’t have gone through the cathartic experience of writing about it. Plus who knows, someone may actually put us through.
Today; letter-writing!
When I had a corporate issue I contacted my local State’s Attorney who drafted a letter on my behalf and sent it to the company. They were very responsive to the inquiry from the Consumer Protection division of my state government. Maybe there’s something similar in QC?
This is horrible but you should also file a claim and/or lawsuit against the Airport! The reason why is it is not fully Air Canada’s fault. The Airport is “The Majority” responsible of the fault, The Airliner is “The Minority” responsible of the fault. Hope this helps.
Another avenue to investigate, though it may not be as cathartic, but may get your claim back faster, is to contact your credit card company, and see if they have baggage/personal effects coverage. Many Gold and Platinum cards have some level of coverage that people just don’t know about.
Sucks to be the victim of crime. Carry-on is the way to go!
Oh my, that’s terrible news. It was such a pretty laptop too!
Good luck in your making Air Canada track down their deliquent baggage handler. Theft should not go unpunished.
Hopefully, you have a remote, secure backup like Jungle Disk/Amazon s3: but sending video files remotely takes forever!
Have you guys also considered using Undercover for your laptops? http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/ Once it is reported stolen and connects to the net, it will start taking isight pictures of the person using the laptop, log IP, and take screen shots. When I get a mac, I’m definitely getting this!
I hate issues like this because I believe that people are honest and good. Its time to start backwards, you start with the company that made the delivery, call the police and file a report. The if the bags were open when they got them, also everyone needs to look on craigs list most people who steal are stupid. They are looking for a quick buck.
So she had the laptop in vegas, and was there a layover? Or right to canada? Also, if she has some free time interview the people who touched the bag and blog about it.
I hope she gets it back, I never let my laptop out of my site because TSA can’t be trusted. Anything of real value, you make sure you carry on or fedex it to your location.
That really sucks. My bags went missing once, also on an air canada flight, and this was on my way to my cousins wedding on a Canada Day long weekend. I had nothing but the clothes on my back. I didn’t end up getting my luggage back until after I got back home. Anyways, the reason I tell you this is that in order to get a resolution, I actually ended up calling the government. There’s a government agency that oversees the airlines and they opened a case and helped me in resolving the matter w/AC. Unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the agency. If I remember, I will post it here, but until then, I figured I’d let you know that such an agency exists.
Didn’t think about the government angle so thanks to Annie Kim, “E to the M” and Fabio to pointing that out. Of course, only thing I hate more than old-school corporations is government
Will have to see if the card that paid for the laptop provides any insurance, but Dave as always comes up with short, sharp, excellent solution. Is why we love him.
I am going to compile these in another post, execute them, and see what the results are.
Thanks for the input on all these guys!
That sucks, but there’s a lesson to learn here. And it’s a no-brainer… Put valuable items in carry-on luggage. If the laptop is indeed that crucial, why let it out of your sight?
Painful, but a serious reality of today’s travel. Basically, if something is out of your hands, consider it up for grabs. No matter what the value, electronics are prime candidates for baggage theft.
Last time our bag was “delayed” we had to replace all our chargers (phone, camera, and GPS). People suck.
My cousin works for AC so I’ve told him to check out your story and to forward it to somebody useful before it finds itself on Digg or something. Nevertheless, I am still amazed that well-informed people like you guys would leave something so valuable in checked luggage. I wouldn’t even trust them with an iPod.
Seriously sucks. For the future, even though you might not be able to prevent laptop theft, you could prevent identity theft, your passwords and data being used by someone else, by always having the drive encrypted when you travel. On the Mac that would mean setting up and using either FileVault or TrueCrypt.
Hindsight is 20/20, about putting it in a carry-on.
On another note, as I told you earlier def. check out local news stations and see if they do an consumer/investigation stories. All you have to do is call their newsroom, and ask the person who answers, even if they don’t have those segments they still may be interested in your story. The airlines will cave so quick once they get bad publicity, especially if others see your story and have similar experiences.
[…] To the asshole who stole my laptop, […]
That sucks serious monster balls.
More good ideas, so thanks again!
And thanks to Seth for quantifying precisely how much this sucks.
Sorry to hear about the laptop, too bad I traded in my premonition abilities for drag queen powers, could have come in handy *lol*
No seriously though, if you guys have an on line petition or even a letter writing campaign I am more than willing to do that. Also my student union created this website that sends emails to members of the school’s senate protest an unfair non-academic code policy! Maybe we could do a similar one if Air Canada does not respond to you guys.
That really sucks about the laptop. I hope something good will come out of this.
When flying my cardinal rule is to always assume that checked-in bags can be lost. I’ve heard of so many people who lost their bags…
So, of course, laptop, camera and everything I don’t want to lose, I carry on the plane. I even pack in the carry-on a few backup essentials (shirt, socks, briefs, etc.) in case the bags end up somewhere else.
It’s not always possible to travel lightly, but if possible, travel light and carry-on everything. That way, if the plane is delayed or there’s a problem at the last minute, you can easily ask an agent for other available flights. The first thing they’ll ask is if you have checked-in bags. If bags are checked-in, you won’t be able to change flights.
Very sorry to hear about your situation. I’ve heard so many horror stories about the airlines either losing bags or items being stolen out of them. There are problems like this everyday and nothing seems to be getting better. It is really scary for me to check baggage with airlines. I try and carry on everything I can and my checked bag is usually full of clothes. I don’t even let my roommate touch my laptop. Defiantly not letting some baggage handler have access to it.
Damn.
That sucks. I feel like I “know” that laptop, haha. It’s weird to think that y’all don’t have it anymore.
Good Luck, at least with getting reimbursed.
I recently traveled to Israel for 20 days with Continental and my luggage has been missing for 4 days, now. The other people I traveled with received broken luggage and items were stolen. More than 30 people!!! with lost items $4,000 of stuff per bag because it was such a long trip. My question is, “When is human error just not worth the fight, I would rather fight with a computer than deal with screaming and yelling over the phone or in person.” I think technological advances are an immediate solution to these problems. fyi; I can’t stand it when people toss and throw your things in front of your face or say, “I like this job we get to jack all these belongings” IT IS NOT FAIR AND IT SHOULD STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!……………………….
I recently traveled to Israel for 20 days with Continental and my luggage has been missing for 4 days, now. The other people I traveled with received broken luggage and items were stolen. More than 30 people!!! with lost items $4,000 of stuff per bag because it was such a long trip. My question is, “When is human error just not worth the fight, I would rather fight with a computer than deal with screaming and yelling over the phone or in person.” I think technological advances are an immediate solution to these problems. fyi; I can’t stand it when people toss and throw your things in front of your face or say, “I like this job we get to jack all these belongings” IT IS NOT FAIR AND IT SHOULD STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!……………………….
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I was just wondering if *anything* has moved on this.