Baggage Options
A couple of weeks ago the Wall Street Journal had an article on a luggage shipping option that United Airlines was offering with FedEx. I thought it was kind of interesting in a 'how much money can they extract from a stone' kind of way.
Basically, the concept it this: You call UAL and they'll have FedEx pick up your luggage. Naturally you'll have to do this the day before you need the bags at your destination. FedEx will overnight the bags and you get to pay a nice big juicy fee. For instance the fee for one bag, 50 pounds maximum, transported 1000 miles is $159 each way. The fee jumps to $179 for trips over 1000 miles.
Now how does this compare to the fees charged for checking bags at the airport? At the current time the fee is $15 for the first bag and $50 for the second. Let's assume that you only want to ship a second bag. That's $159 x 2 = $318 versus $50 x 2 = $100. So it would cost $218 for the privilege of shipping the second bag. On the other hand this leaves you still standing around at luggage claim at the end of your flight waiting for the first bag. So no real improvement except to UAL and FedEx's bottom line. If you ship just one bag and don't check another then you're out $278. Pricy.
I can actually see some circumstances where someone might want to use the service however. People with lots of money and not happy or physically fit enough to schlep luggage around an airport might be good candidates. Shipping bulky items like skis or whatever might be worthwhile. Or for people that absolutely must bring something on a trip that they absolutely cannot afford to lose along the way might find it worthwhile to spend the higher fees and thus avoid lost luggage in-route.
To be honest the other luggage services are considerably more expensive, ranging from 81% to 109% more. In our case we have instead done the following: gritted our teeth and paid the bag checking fees at the airport; gritted our teeth and ruthlessly downsized our travel needs till we can fit it all in a single bag, or a rollaboard; gritted our teeth, visited the dentist to have the chips from excessive teeth gritting repaired, and just shipped something directly with UPS or FedEx rather than going through a third party like UAL.
