My uncle was coming to visit me in Ecuador and bringing a laptop for me. It was in his checked bags, but somewhere between Panama City, Panama, and Quito, Ecuador, it was stolen out of his luggage. The bag was not stolen, only the laptop. Obviously he should have had a lock on it, but he didn't. Is there any recourse for this? The airline's policy is that a written report needed to be filed within 7 days (which we didn't do), and his credit card travel insurance excludes computers, software and cell phones. Even if it didn’t, the language skirts the issue of theft from baggage.
Is there really no recourse for something like this?