Has anyone else been ripped off by Emirates for excess baggage? At £35 per kilo!
In September Emirates withdrew their "migration" tickets apparently, which had a 40kg baggage allowance per person. We booked our flights in October when they gave us 20kg allowance per person from Newcastle, via Dubai to Perth, Australia.
Knowing this would not be enough I checked with our movers, Pickfords, for some airfreight and they priced 150kg of unaccompanied air baggage, to be collected from our house and to be picked up from Perth Intl airport at £350 all in. So I reckoned, even if Emirates were a bit more expensive it would be worth it to be able to arrive with all our luggage at the same time. And I was sure we wouldn't need 150kg.
At the check in the nice young lady saw we had excess baggage and then weighed EVERYTHING. Handbaggage too - even our children's cuddly toys. In total, except for ourselves, we had 105kg of excess baggage, and Emirates wanted £3675! They gave us 3 choices, pay up and board, abandon 105kg of baggage and board or walk away. They then waived 48kg of baggage, 28kg of which was handbaggage anyway, in effect giving us a free suitcase, and wanted £1995 for the remaining 57kg.
In effect, it costs the same for 20kg of excess baggage as it does a full adult fare and their 20kg allowance. I have tried to complain to Emirates and asked them to at least justify their pricing policy but they replied:
"An airline is at liberty to determine the excess baggage rates it charges and to change these at any time"
They wont justify the excess baggage charges and they obviously bear no relation to the actual costs incurred to them as the carrier.
As such they can be rightly described as a "RIP OFF". As a pax, at check-in, you have very few options and very little time to arrange anything.
No other carrier charges anything like these rates as far as I know. Thieving b******s.
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