Customer Reviews

The Empty Carousel a Cunsumer's Guide to Checked and Carry-on Luggage

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If you are unsure of the rules of the road, so to speak, for your luggage on an airplane trip, this is a helpful little manual. It's written from an insider view of an airline baggage handling department, so this is from the source.

Some very helpful hints crop up immediately; put a laminated or plastic-bagged sheet on top of your packed stuffed inside your suitcase. (Frequent travelers might as well laminate that sheet or use a page protector.) Use flat, sewn-on luggage tags if possible and make sure your locks, if you use them, are TSA-approved.

Prominent people and anyone who looks like high-net-worth should be judicious in how they label their bags to avoid theft; and most theft occurs, no surprise, by people yanking YOUR bag off the carousel and making off with it. In short; if you can live with out it going along, unless the "something valuable" is vital to your trip, leave it home.

Another point was stressed; most bags go astray as the destination tags are placed on them. I can confirm this--I always check my tags for the destination code and not a few times, I've seen the wrong code put on the bag. If the bag is gone astray, the luggage trace system often finds it and most bags are recovered in about 48 hours.

All in all, a good manual for any frequent traveler. The advice in the book will probably save you many times its cost in contents and inconvenience when you lose a piece of luggage.

If you are a road warrior, this book won't add much to your knowledge about how to get your checked luggage from here to there. Why? Lots of bad things have happened to you already, and you've learned the hard way how to protect yourself.

But if you are someone who flies occasionally for weddings and vacations, you can save yourself a lot of agony and worry by reading and following this advice. The book is written by an authoritative source, someone who has managed baggage services for a U.S. airline.

Almost all lost luggage is merely delayed, so you'll probably get it eventually. The book advises good ways to add identification to speed a more rapid recovery. That's good. You'll also get tips on how to handle your claim.

I didn't see any advice in the book that I disagreed with.

However, the book is quite lean on advice for carry-on luggage. Here's my advice: The key lesson is to have your critical items in containers that can fit beneath the seat in front of you and to avoid sitting in bulkhead facing rows so you have some guaranteed storage space. In addition, get to the gate early so your chances to getting some overhead space are increased if you need it. Never put anything you cannot afford to lose into a carry-on bag that might have to be checked because the overhead storage is full. Otherwise, your bag may get checked at the last minute and mishandled.

I also thought the book missed three important points about checked luggage:

1. Take as little with you as possible so you can check as little luggage as possible. To his credit, Mr. Mueller points out that you can send critical items on ahead by ground and air freight carriers (like copies of reports).

2. Book nonstop flights. The chances of being mishandled are much reduced when you do.

3. Don't check in too early even though many airlines will takes bags four hours before flight time. There may be no cart assigned yet and the bags may be misplaced before the cart is assigned. Almost all of my delayed baggage occurred due to this problem before I wised up.

Enjoy your flight!

Daily we read of the increasing lines at the airports across the US and around the world, the late departures, altered plane assignments at the last minute, and the stringent check-in rules accompanied by long lines. All of that is daunting to the planning traveler, but add to that the frustration and at times disastrous loss of checked in luggage and travel begins to lose its allure.

In this very spare, no nonsense little book Scott T. Mueller has used his personal background as a system manager of baggage services to create a tight and easy to follow guide on both the mysteries of how luggage is lost and, more important, how we as travelers can take the assertive stance to prevent mush of the world wide frustrating problem. Mueller explains how mistakes are made - whether internally or at the baggage carousel - and how to cope with these mistakes. He wisely informs us how to label and mark our luggage, pitfalls to avoid in check-in and pickup of luggage, and even the complex rules and regulations binding the airlines in baggage recovery or reimbursement, giving timelines and inside information on how to take care of things ourselves!

This little book is now an invaluable aid to those who travel either for business or for pleasure, teaching the reader methods to avoid loss and how to manage the process of recouping lost goods - or the reimbursement for same. It is a smart, quick read, full of pertinent information. Grady Harp, September 07

If you have spent any amount of time traveling by air you have probably experienced that sick feeling that comes when all the bags have finished coming onto the carousel and yours isn't there. You are not even sure whom to see about finding your bag, but somehow you do. Most of the time the bag either came in on an earlier flight and is off in the corner (but no one told you) or it has been misrouted somewhere and will catch up with you later. But sometimes your stuff has found a worse fate. For a few years back in the 90s I had a gold card and flew all over the world on business. Frankly, having any kind of a problem was rare, but it did happen, and the information here would have helped me. And it will help you.

This handy little book (booklet?) provides a bunch of handy tips on how to protect your stuff, what not to pack, what signals thieves that your bags might have valuables worth taking, what is covered against damage (and why YOU have to prove your claims), and if all else fails, how to file a claim. Plus a lot more.

The author, Scott T. Mueller, was manager for baggage services for an airline. He knows what he is talking about and he shares it with you. The book has ten short chapters: 1) Baggage Check-in & Proper ID, 2) Luggage & Locks, 3) Before You Pack, 4) Luggage Damage & What's Covered, 5) What Thieves Target and When, 6) Domestic vs International Compensation, 7) Luggage Security at the Carousel, 8) Where Does Luggage Go When It Disappears, 9) Filing a Luggage Claim with the Airline, 10) Make the Best of Your Travel Experience.

I like the way each chapter is organized. The text of each chapter is concisely and clearly written. There is a little teaser box at the beginning to get you to read it. And at the end there is a nice list of the points made in the chapter.

Simple, Handy, and Helpful.

So what happens when you show up at the airport after a flight, and your luggage decided to take a different itinerary? Those are the questions and issues that Scott T. Mueller deals with in his short self-published book The Empty Carousel: A Consumers Guide to Checked and Carry-on Luggage. This is a very quick read that doesn't guarantee you *won't* lose your bags, but you'll be in a much better position to deal with the situation after reading it.

Contents:
Baggage Check-in - Proper Identification; Luggage and Locks; Before You Pack; Luggage Damage - What's Covered? What's Not?; What Thieves Target and When; Domestic vs. International Compensation - What's Covered? What's Not?; Luggage Security at the Carousel; Where Does Luggage Go When It Disappears?; Filing a Luggage Claim with the Airline; Make the Best of Your Travel Experience

Mueller shares his nearly 20 years of experience in the airline industry when it comes to how the luggage handling system works. When it comes to dealing with lost luggage, he's seen it all... including lost cremated remains of husbands and favorite pets. His goal here is to help you pack properly to avoid damage and expedite the process of reconnecting you and your luggage should you become separated. The first couple of chapters are probably familiar to anyone who's traveled a bit. But when you start into the Before You Pack chapter, you start to see things from the "other side" of the desk. You learn what things the airline will not cover in case of loss (it's a larger list than you'd expect). You'll find out that your definition of luggage damage and the airline's definition are probably different (luggage is designed to protect the contents, not to avoid wear and tear). The process for filing claims is more complex than you'd imagine, and the documentation required to prove value of certain items probably doesn't exist (like receipts for that leather jacket!). Knowing all this going in, you can pack appropriately to decrease the chance of irreplaceable loss, while giving yourself a better chance of a happy outcome should the bags take a different vacation than you did.

My only knock on the book is the size. At 80 pages, it's not very long. Add in the fact that the font type is relatively large and the lines are double-spaced, and you're almost dealing with a bound article instead of a book. That's not meant to diminish the value of the information. In fact, it's likely that the size and format will lend itself to actually reading the material at one sitting. Still, you need to keep that in mind so you're not disappointed when a very thin book shows up in your mailbox.

As my wife and I get ready for a vacation, we'll be using the information we learned here to guard against loss. Hopefully we won't have to use it, but better to be informed and prepared.

This book gives detailed information on how to protect your luggage, how thieves target your bags, how to avoid losing your luggage, and how to deal with the airlines (filing claims) if you happen to become a statistic. It is a wealth of information and I highly recommend it for all airline travelers. Best to all in your travels!

This book contains no useful information for a traveller. It is amazing that the same simplistic statements, avoid checking luggage if posssible, use durable luggage with multiple labels, unpleasant things are likely to happen to your checked baggage as airline service is neither gentle nor caring, could be expanded to 90 pages. The book has the largest typeface I have ever seen outside of a children's publication. There also seems to be a literacy issue if the subtitle is really a "Cunsumer's" Guide. Easily the worst value purchase in my years as an Amazon "consumer".

Traveling across the country or around the world hasn't been this difficult since the days of covered wagons and tall masted sailing ships. At least back then it was easier to keep track of your luggage! Focusing specifically on the subject of travel luggage, "The Empty Carousel: A Consumer's Guide to Checked And Carry-on Luggage by Scott T. Mueller is an indispensable travel guide for airline passengers traveling today's airlines in an era where there is an average of 10,000 lost luggage pieces each day in the USA alone! In just ten compact chapters of tips, trick, techniques, and practical advice, readers will learn what they must do to insure the safety and retrievability of their luggage with respect to baggage check-in and proper identification; luggage and locks; preparations for packing; luggage damage and insurance coverage; luggage thieves; domestic vs. international compensation for lost or damaged luggage; luggage security at the airport carousel; where luggage goes when it disappears; filing luggage claims with an airline; and 'Make the Best of Your Travel Experience'. Informed and informative, "The Empty Carousel" should be considered mandatory reading for anyone traveling today's airlines, foreign or domestic!