[Resolved]  British Airways — Check in Baggage lost and claim not given completely

Address:

Bangalore, Karnataka

It has been a pain with BA after my first ever US trip ended in a disaster at this point of time. Its been more than 2 months that i havent got my check in baggage which should be a responsibility with BA. I could easily blame Lufthansa or U.S Airways along with BA for not uniting my bag with me but i had six people travelling along with me who received their baggage through British airways (eventhough that was received a week later since they landed) then why would i blame anyother airways. I have spent the 2 months in calling customer care of BA and talking with them for nearly 30 minutes to 2 hours on a daily basis. The nightmare in calling them is that they do not have a toll free number and charge me 1:50 INR per minute. I would not mind that if I had received my bag or the money worth the materials inside the bag. Now when I say i need money worth inside the bag it’s the duty of the airline to pay me the money I have spent in reaching out to them and for the time I have wasted. But instead I have not even got the money worth the materials inside the bag.
Because this was my first trip to New York most of the purchases that I made were kept inside the check in bag along with some of the stuff that I had take from Bangalore(Details attached). Now BA expects me to keep the bills of all these items with me. I did explain to them that all the bills, including my hotel and expenditure bills and for the purchases that I made were inside the check in bag. The bag also included an official book of Yahoo! With details on my learning from New York and my passport xerox and ticket details.
Now that I had given details of all these stuff including the minutest thing inside that bag (a warranty of a hugo boss watch) BA could not search the bag since 2 months and 20 Days till now. (Reached Bangalore on 11th September 2012). And when I started the claim process after 21 days of losing the bag I expected to receive my compensation pretty soon, which never happened. I received a response to my claim after 3 weeks stating that your claim process has begun, WHAT!!!! I decided to stay calm as I was relieved someone responded. After another 3 weeks I get a response saying, as I did not provide them bills of the stuff inside the bag they will be able to pay me only half of the claim that I have provided. My actual loss was more than 2 lakhs Indian Rupees (if the bills of my hotel stay and food which was inside the bag was calculated). But I was fortunate that I had the hotel folks give me a copy of the same so that I could claim it in my office. But I expected BA to pay me the price of the materials inside the bag and the cost of the bag which came up to 65000 Indian Rupees (neglecting the importance of some of the emotional content inside the bag which should actually cost me more than a million in my mind). How would I get bills of stuff that I brought from the USA which is inside the bag itself along with materials. And how would I get bills of the materials that are gifted to me and are very old in its purchase date. And when BA has lost my bag, how do they expect me to search all the bills. My only options left are keep sending them emails or quotes of stuff that I am buying for the loss occurred and if I did not get any response… go ahead legally. :’(

Also the worst part is despite conveying a message to the BA customer service via email that I don’t need any money from them if I don’t get the complete claim or my bag, they have just pushed the half amount (peanuts) to my account. I am not going to touch a penny from it until justice is served.