Receipts and lost luggage

I read the subscriber’s recounting of her lost-luggage experience (Dec. ’11, pg. 27). A few years ago, my wife’s bag never showed up after being checked onto a flight to California from Spain via Mexico City. Dealing with the airline was an extended nightmare, beyond just the issues discussed in the subscriber’s letter. I will spare you those details, but I have suggestions that may be useful. My homeowner’s insurance policy covers personal property that is lost outside of the home. This includes luggage, and I assume that this is a standard part of the coverage under most home­owners’ policies. In the case of luggage lost from an airline flight, if your insurance covering lost luggage is secondary* to the primary liability of the airline, the insurance company must be satisfied that you have recovered as much as possible from the airline before they will act on your insurance claim. In that case, the insurance company also will require prior processing of, or at least coordination with, any potential claim under a separate travel insurance policy. We did not have a separate travel policy covering our trip. An insurance claim is not subject to the liability limit that applies to airlines under the Montreal Convention, so if the value of the luggage and its contents exceeds what the airline eventually pays (or if the insurance company has a less strict requirement than the airline does regarding purchase receipts), that is when an additional amount might be recovered under the homeowner’s policy. In my case, the insurance company required me to list the purchase dates and costs of the items lost, and then they discounted the purchase costs based on the ages of the items. Since the resulting amount still exceeded what I was able to collect from the airline, I received a payment from the insurance company as well. Everyone may value their time differently in terms of the potential recovery on a claim versus the time and aggravation involved. In my case, it was worth the hassle of filing the insurance claim. Based partly on our lost-luggage experience, my wife and I now retain purchase receipts for virtually everything that we buy that is not for immediate short-term consumption. Mostly, these are for clothing, so we will have receipts adding up to an amount well beyond the airline’s liability limit in the case of any future luggage loss. However, we also keep receipts for virtually all household items, such as furniture, furnishings, electronics, appliances, kitchenware — anything that potentially could be lost in a home burglary, fire, flood or other natural disaster. These could be very important in connection with a homeowner’s insurance claim. I keep the receipts at my office, since they would be lost if a natural disaster occurred at our home. BRUCE BERGER Mountain View, CA *ITN ran the above letter past insurance broker Dan Drennen of Travel Insurance Center (Omaha, NE; 866/979-6753, ext. 3621), who added the following: “Bruce makes some good points regarding filing claims on a secondary baggage coverage policy; just be aware that there also are travel protection plans that offer primary baggage coverage. With some insurance companies you can buy this coverage the day before you leave, and with others you may qualify for primary baggage coverage if you purchase the insurance within 15 days of the first trip payment or deposit. There are no annual travel protection plans that offer primary coverage.”