Bi!! wrote:
> FWIW, my last trip with wine was a disaster. You cannot carry it on.
> It must be checked. I had it in styro shippers. They opened the
> shippers and opened and drained the wine. When I complained at the
> Delta baggage claim counter they told me that for security purposes
> they could basically do what they want and they would not honor a claim
> for the value of the wine. The wine was moderate priced stuff but the
> principal really ticked me off.

Had that been me I would not have stopped at the baggage claim counter.
That is intentional destruction of your personal property, and demands
compensation. Did you try to push this issue further up the chain of
command? Simply outrageous.

When I was traveling in Italy a few years ago, I got dropped off in
Verona when the train service went on strike. The next day, the wanted
me to buy a new ticket for the remainer of my journey, since I had a
Euro-pass and had the last travel day punched when I boarded the train
that stopped in Verona instead of at it's destination (Monaco). I was
understandably furious - polite at first though, incapable of believing
that someone would both understand what was going on AND try to make be
buy another ticket. Surely the lady at the booth just needed it
explained more clearly.

Well it became more clear that she was just being obtuse, even
suggesting that I was in Verona instead of Monaco because I *wanted* to
be in Verona, not because, well, that's where the train dropped us off
when they went on strike. I'm sure many patrons who were in the Verona
train station on the evening of February 18th, 1999 remember what
happened next to this day. It must have been amusing to see an
American college kid screaming through a ticket window in French (the
only language the clerk and I knew in common) going on and on about
"Non, j'y suis a cause de cette p*tain de grève!", and so on.
Eventually she pulled the blind down, and a security guard came down to
make sure everything was OK (it was, I just mad - he was merely there
to observe). Then a manager came down, and mediated. After explaining
my case to him, he immediately understood and issued me a voucher for
the remainder of my trip to Monaco, gratis.

It wasn't the most graceful way to do it (it didn't help that I hadn't
slept much in almost a week by that point, making my temper rather
short), but I did push the issue, an obvious injustice, to a higher
level, and won.

- Chris