The Last Day in Munich With Baggage Problems...

We made it to Edinburgh safely. We did have a little trouble though. Here is how yesterday went:

So we packed our bags at the hotel. We evenly distributed the weight so that each suitcase would not exceed 20kg. After about an hour or two of re-arranging our belongings, we took our massive load (for 2 people) of suitcases down to the reception area and checked out of the hotel. We were lucky not to get the lady that had a blank expression on her face, she was standing behind the lady that was helping us. We called a taxi to take us to the airport with our heavy load.

As we were driving to the airport, the driver attempted to tell us two jokes and we failed miserably at understanding them, but we laughed anyway. We arrived to the airport and we loaded our luggage on carts. We arrived at approximately 12:20pm and check-in did not open until about 2:45pm, so we had a while before we could get anything accomplished. While we were waiting, we weighed all of our luggage to make sure it was evenly distributed. My carry-on was the heaviest, weighing in at about 32kg. The laptop is what weighed it down so much. We wanted to ask an EasyJet employee if we could add on an extra bag, so we weren't over the weight limit for one bag. In our attempt to find someone to ask this question, we did not succeed. There was no one at the EasyJet counter at all, and no one ever came in those 2 hours in between. So we patiently waited for someone to check us in. The line behind us quickly swelled into this massive crowd of people, and we were first in line!

Being first in line, we thought we would definitely get things accomplished and worked out with the baggage. Wrong!! 2:45pm came around finally and the two people walked up to the EasyJet counter, with blank looks on there faces. They were not even EasyJet employees, they were Swissport employees. They get everything set up for the check-in and finally ask us for our passports and booking number. We hand them over to the stone-faced man in front of us. We begin putting our baggage up on the scale and weighing them. Each bag was right at 20kg or was over by less than 1kg. So we were very happy and thought things were going quite well. We had succeeded in spreading the weight out amongst our suitcases. This is the mindset that we had the entire time stoneface was checking our baggage in. As the last bag went through, stoneface looked up at us and said something!! Amazing! What he said though, would ruin our day just like the first incident with the luggage back in Edinburgh.

Stoneface said, "You are 63kg over the weight", and we said, "What!!!". We looked back on our paperwork for EasyJet and no where did it say that there was a limit of the amount of weight you could bring on. What our paper work had said was:

Your hold baggage weight allowance is 20kg, and you may check in one hold bag per person free of charge. Additional hold bags may be carried subject to a charge of 5.00GBP per bag per flight wehn paying in advance and 10.00GBP when at the airport.

Nowhere in that sentence does it say that even if you pay in advance for the extra baggage fee, when you get to the airport, each kg of the excess baggage that you paid for in advance will be charged. So we basically paid the fee for extra bags for nothing!


Stoneface said that there was a limit of 20kg per person (which is what it said on our paper) and one carry-on, that is it, all else is excess baggage and is subject to charge (was not on the paper, it was supposed to be a fee of 5GBP when payin in advance). Each kg was 9 euros, that is a lot of money when converted to US dollars!!!!! So we argued with him and told him that he was wrong and the airliner is wrong. Stoneface looked up at us, and without saying a word he glanced back down and began writing. He handed us a piece of paper and said, "Bring this to the information desk and when you pay for this, I will give you your boarding passes." So we argued no more, because words were not getting through to thick-headed stoneface.

We walked on over to the information counter and told the woman in front of us what had happened. "We were never told of this excess baggage fee, and nowhere on our paperwork does it say there will be a charge per kg. It simply states that you can pay for excess baggage in advance at 5GBP." So we proceeded to argue with her that EasyJet was in the wrong. We desperately tried to pull our way out of this one and our argument was not succeeding. We were slowly losing this battle. We told her that there are no numbers to contact EasyJet or email, so it is impossible to contact ANYONE with questions, the only number is a hotline number that costs about 60pence per minute (about $1.20 US dollars per minute). "EasyJet is definitely not EASY to deal with", she replied with, "I know, they are not." The SwissPort lady pulled out a long document and showed us where it said about the excess baggage. What the paper said, was NOT on the paperwork that we had.

We did not have a plan A or plan B, we were just angry and wanted to get on our flight and go back to Scotland. She decreased the amount of kg from 63kg to 40kg, so that saved us some, but was still a hefty amount to pay. We paid the amount, I walked back to stoneface and took the boarding passes. Onward we went to our gate. We ate lunch and boarded our flight and thanked god that we were that much closer to home. We our in Edinburgh now and this is our final day before we arrive home. When I get home, I am going to get down on my hands and knees and kiss US soil! We miss home and cannot wait to get back to it. Miss everyone!

-Dan and Andrea