HA! HA! HA! lots o' news on the consumer (self) protection front. first, Evil Airlines (aka Líneas Aéreas de Stalinista) actually did the right thing, approximately ten phone calls, two in-person vists, and eleven back and forth email messages later: they paid up!

we received checks totaling $1749.00, and a flight voucher for $450. (this voucher was for the amount I had to estimate replacement cost for, and so they wouldn't pay cash for it.)

it's "checks", plural, since they can't issue checks over $800, so it was two for $800 each, and one for $149. (this is interesting in and of itself, since, surely, they must semi-regularly do more than $800 worth of damage to people's baggage.) what it suggests to me is that they are usually more successful at screwing around with people in the settlement phase. HA!

now, this victory wasn't without turmoil, and wasn't complete:

turmoil: the dumbdumbdumbdummies SPELLED MY LAST NAME WRONG on the checks and voucher. this, after i know it's spelled correctly on the computerized claim account that was created when we first made the claim, and despite the fact that my name was all over this guy's email account. ahhhhh, well: it was only by one letter, so i took the checks to the Bank of the Soviet (name changed to protect other guilty parties), explained to Teller Comrade Beria about the one-letter misspelling, and she advised me to simply write my name AS SPELLED, i.e., incorrectly, on the back in the endorsement section, and then sign under that, WITH THE MISSPELLING. i expressed some concern about this, but then Teller's Supervisor, Comrade Voroshilov, confirmed this approach. fortunately, my signature contains few enough of the letters of my last name in any clear way that i didn't have to forge a signature.

now, it has (thankfully) been a while since i studied the law of commerical paper, so i had to go back and review the ol' UCC (Uniform Commerical Code) on this point:

U.C.C. - ARTICLE 3 - NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENTS
§ 3-110. IDENTIFICATION OF PERSON TO WHOM INSTRUMENT IS PAYABLE.
(a) The person to whom an instrument is initially payable is determined by the
intent of the person, whether or not authorized, signing as, or in the name or
behalf of, the issuer of the instrument. The instrument is payable to the person
intended by the signer even if that person is identified in the instrument by a
name or other identification that is not that of the intended person.

but, it turns out that Comrade Beria's advice was probably correct:

§ 3-204. INDORSEMENT
(d) If an instrument is payable to a holder under a name that is not the name of
the holder, indorsement may be made by the holder in the name stated in the
instrument or in the holder's name or both, but signature in both names may be
required by a person paying or taking the instrument for value or collection.

yes: indorsement is with an i in the context of commerical paper. i'd forgotten that, too.

not complete: yesssss, well: theoretically, i still have to fly the nasty sunsabitches again, if i want to use that $450 voucher. sigh. well, a free flight is a free flight, as demonstrated by The Good Senator and i taking that miserable deathtrap flight on the aforementioned airline, which has resulted in back pain that still hasn't gone away.

so anyway. i deposited the checks, waited for them to clear, and have been quite pleased with the end result ever since. now, if my bathroom just didn't smell like jet fuel...