Consumerist reader P.L. has a bone to pick with the Transportation Security Administration. Seems they’re of the belief that they can take six months to decide whether or not it’s their fault his video camera went missing from his luggage, but when P.L. takes a few weeks to answer their questions — well, that’s just not acceptable.

P.L. says his luggage was pilfered last September, and an expensive video camera ended up missing. He followed their rules for filing a claim, and settled in to wait the six months the TSA says it will take for them to respond. When they finally did, they had follow-up questions for P.L., along the lines of, “How do you know it was us who took it?”

He says he took about a month to respond, because there were no time limits for his reply set forth in the TSA guidelines. Lo and behold, his claim was denied because he took too long, he says, but that he can resubmit his claim again. How nice.

He sent the below reply to the TSA to express his dismay:

This is unacceptable. I respectfully request that you continue to work with me on this issue.

Nowhere in your correspondence to me did you indicate that there was a deadline for my response to you. I submitted the claim on Sept 6, 2011 — your first response came on March 7, 2012 — you took a full six months for your first communication with me, asking some followup questions. I took 34 days to respond to your followup questions. It is unreasonable that you arbitrarily set a secret cutoff date where my claim is denied if I don’t respond in time. The fair and reasonable thing to do would be to continue your investigation into my stolen camera.

Thank you for your consideration.

P.L. wants to know if anyone’s ever had success filing such a claim with the TSA — or if they’ve also met with arbitrary obstacles and double standards.

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