Carol Carvalho was planning on celebrating her 70th birthday in luxury with a Mediterranean cruise. Instead she had to make do with budget store clothes because British Airways lost her luggage for 13 days.

Ms Carvalho’s friends had organised a birthday dinner and cake in one of the speciality restaurants on-board the cruise ship. But she would not have her picture taken, because she was wearing a $3 T-shirt and $5 pants.

“Everyone was dressed up in there except me,” she said. “BA managed to ruin the whole trip and of course my birthday.”

Ms Carvalho arrived in Barcelona, Spain, on July 3, having flown there with BA from Philadelphia, United States, via London, England.

She immediately reported the loss of her luggage to BA, who “were very unhelpful, telling me that they could not track my luggage even though there was a bar code on the luggage tags”.

“They gave me a phone number to call and told me I would be hearing from them in 24 hours.”

Ms Carvalho informed BA that she was going on a cruise on July 5 and desperately needed clothes and toiletries — she was told she would only be allowed €60 a day.

At her hotel, staff tried tracking her luggage online without success and Ms Carvalho called BA again, but the “phone rang for nearly half an hour without anyone answering” — the same thing happened the next morning.

With an excursion already booked and paid for that day, Ms Carvalho only had a couple of hours to pick up some essentials at a budget store.

By that evening she had still not been contacted by BA, so she called again and was finally able to speak to someone, who told her that they would alert all the airports. Staff on-board the cruise ship also tried tracking her luggage online and called BA daily “only to hold on for nearly 30 minutes with nobody answering”.

When she arrived in London on Monday, Ms Carvalho finally found out that her luggage had made it as far as Naples, Italy. But instead of being delivered to her it was sent to London, where she could not collect it even though it was still there, because it was destined for Bermuda and “would be delivered some time this week”.

When Ms Carvalho returned to work on Wednesday she discovered that a taxi driver had called the night before, informing her that he had her luggage.

However, he could not deliver it because he had been given the wrong address and only had her office number.

“They didn’t even call to say a cab driver would be delivering it,” Ms Carvalho said. “British Airways had all my phone numbers, addresses and e-mail.”

Ms Carvalho said she will be putting in a claim for all expenses, including her phone and internet bill, as well as the duty she paid on clothes she did not want.

Despite repeated attempts to get in touch with BA, Ms Carvalho said she has spent days hearing nothing.

“In all of this saga not once have British Airways (BA) called me, texted or e-mailed me, or communicated in any way,” Ms Carvalho said. “Nobody and I repeat nobody has contacted me.”

A British Airways spokeswoman said: “We are very sorry that Ms Carvalho experienced a delay in her luggage. We are working with our airline partners involved in this journey to improve processes in the future.”

Regarding the claim nobody had been in touch, the spokeswoman said: “Our customer relations team reached out to Ms Carvalho. Ms Carvalho was advised that a case number had been created and that we will contact as soon as possible once we have looked into the issues raised so that her claims can be settled. We expect that to happen this week.”