My suitcase ended up in the wrong country — don’t make the same common mistake I did

Talk about trouble in paradise.

A mom and daughter traveled to Mexico for a vacation full of beaches and margaritas — but they learned an important travel lesson the hard way after a lost luggage nightmare.

Arizona-based writer Jill Schildhouse shared in a first-person account for Business Insider that after touching down in Puerto Vallarta, her mother’s checked luggage was nowhere to be found.

Schildhouse’s bag came out on the baggage carousel pretty quickly, but her mom’s small pink bag was a no show.

After being advised to head to the customer service counter, the mom and daughter duo were given a large black suitcase with the mom’s airline-issued luggage tags attached — clearly not her luggage at all.

In disbelief, they opened up the case just to be sure — finding it full of someone else’s clothes and belongings.

“At that moment, it was clear something had gone very, very wrong,” Schildhouse wrote.

They were filing a “mishandled item report” when Schildhouse reached into her purse and pulled out the luggage-tag stickers given to her by the American Airlines crew back in Phoenix — and she instantly realized the mixup.

“My mom’s sticker didn’t have her name on it at all. Instead, it bore a completely different one with a destination that made my stomach drop: Delhi, India,” she explained.

When they had checked in for their flight, “a staff member must’ve accidentally swapped the luggage tags” — and her mom’s luggage ended up halfway around the globe.

With her mom’s luggage thousands of miles away and a stranger’s suitcase in their hands, Schildhouse realized that this taught her an important lesson when traveling.

She admitted that she “mindlessly stuffs” those luggage stickers into her bag “on every trip without a glance” — and now realizes that travelers should always double check them before walking away from the check-in counter.

“I take more than 50 flights a year, and I had never once thought to verify that the name and destination on the tag actually matched my own,” she admitted.

But Schildhouse and her mom decided they couldn’t let the mishap ruin their trip.

“After the initial frustration wore off, we realized there was nothing to do but make the best of the situation,” she wrote.

American Airlines promised they would cover all expenses for replacing what her mom needed on the trip, and after submitting the receipts for their shopping trip to get a makeshift vacation wardrobe and rebuying the essentials, the airline reimbursed all $601.08 spent.

Her mom’s suitcase arrived back to their home about a week later — after its trip around the world to Delhi and back.