9 ms·

The company that sells lost airplane luggage

152 points by Anon84 6y ago

OmarShehata 6y ago
The premise doesn't make sense: these bags are not "lost", they're being sold in a specific store, why aren't the owners looking for them there? The title is misleading but it's explained in the post, these are "unclaimed luggage". Most likely the owner decided to take the compensation option when it was taking too long for the airline to find it. The article does mention a case of someone finding his own item in that store, more by accident than by intentionally looking for it.
- yuubi 6y ago
  > why aren't the owners looking for them there? Some people live far enough from Alabama that it's inconvenient to visit the store every couple of days to check.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > why aren't the owners looking for them there? I'd have to have something astronomically valuable or personally significant to me in order to go all the way to Alabama and root around in a warehouse just for the off-chance of finding it. Most people aren't flying with the sole manuscript for their novel checked in their baggage. How much time do you think they're going to be willing to invest in getting some old clothes back? They just claim on insurance and forget about it.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    > I'd have to have something astronomically valuable or personally significant ... Precisely what's described in TFA. "A presidential platinum Rolex watch worth $64k (sold for $32k)" "A 5.8-carat diamond ring appraised for $46k (sold for $23k)" Or, more poignantly (but perhaps less factually specific) from the intro: "A few days later, a retired mechanic named Charlie buys your grandfather’s watch for $150 ... and ... a nurse from Florida becomes the proud new owner of the scarf your mum knitted you for Christmas." The first couple may be something you'd overlook if $-reimbursed by insurance, but I could imagine circumstances where the last couple of examples would inspire a ceaseless search.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      They're listing outlying extreme cases. Most people aren't travelling with a $64k watch in their checked baggage. It says this in the article only a third of it is worth selling at any price. > In the end, only about one-third of the items in baggage end up for sale
      - Jedd 6y ago
        I think GP was referring to people that desperately wanted their belongings back. I understand that a lot of business flyers would write off their underwear, toothbrush, and gym shoes -- but I don't think GP was suggesting those people should be dumpster diving in Alabamaba. (I'm in Australia, and I really don't have any idea how inconvenient it is to get to Alabama, and to then dive through a warehouse of bags, assuming it's even possible.) > They're listing outlying extreme cases. Most people aren't travelling with a $64k watch in their checked baggage. It says this in the article only a third of it is worth selling at any price. Totally agree - but the point is that in some cases (npi) there clearly were valuables worth the effort, at least from a naive calculation perspective.
        jakemal 6y ago
        The kinds of people who own watches worth double most people cars most likely have enough money to make losing it a minor inconvenience.
        quickthrowman 6y ago
        As well as the money to pay for theft/loss insurance on their 64k platinum Rolex Day-Date w presidential bracelet. There are also multiples of this watch for ~$25,000 on chrono24, it’s not as desirable like the steel rolexes are.
        ghaff 6y ago
        Though, not to victim blame, but who on earth puts things that are very valuable and aren't even bulky or heavy in their checked luggage? I rarely check luggage (and in >1M miles of travel have never had it permanently lost) but I don't even check things like a favorite pair of custom-made hiking boots.
- mcguire 6y ago
  "[W]hy aren't the owners looking for them there?" The airline holds luggage for at least 3 months; then there's the time taken to ship it to Alabama, pile it in the corner, sort it, price it, and put it out. I like Scottsboro, but hanging around for months on the off chance that Granma's sweater will show up is just not going to happen. Oh, and it's "Unclaimed Baggage".
darrellsilver 6y ago
This quote is fantastic: > In 1992, Roy Hall, a 46-year-old minister, bought a royal blue Hickey-Freeman jacket at Unclaimed Baggage. When he took it home, he noticed the name “Whitey Ford” — a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Yankees — written inside of it. Informed of the find, Ford asked for his jacket back; Hall decided to keep it. Who cares if it’s true; the minister is like, “return a lost article to its rightful owner? Nah.”
- Jedd 6y ago
  I've been told that without religion we'd have no morals.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - e40 6y ago
    Yes it’s ironic, that as an atheist, I wouldn’t have done what that minister did.
  - NikolaNovak 6y ago
    Ditto; the statement falls apart RAPIDLY upon about 12 seconds examination. Easiest entries are: 1. The extremely diverse morals, frameworks, ethics, and actions different people draw from same source materials. 2. The multitude of ethical frameworks and moral people without religious roots
  - mrtweetyhack 6y ago
    Santa exists
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  To be honest, if I paid for a jacket, I'd probably ask that person to pay me for the money I spent...
eatbitseveryday 6y ago
How does the airline have the legal right to sell your items, and at a possibly lower value than the contents are worth? The article says a diamond rings and expensive watches were discovered. $3k in compensation likely seems insufficient.
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  If an airline had to compensate people for the full value of their luggage, no airline could bear the risk of transporting luggage at all.
  - barrkel 6y ago
    Sure they could. They'd get people to buy insurance before the trip and offload the costs and complexity that way.
    - nogabebop23 6y ago
      You can buy insurance for everything, so I was surprised something as obvious as this isn't available; a quick search found lots of 3rd party baggae insurance policies. If you want to find out the true cost of lost luggage it's some profit margin less than these premiums.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Though I suspect there's quite a bit of adverse selection going on there. I know that on the rare occasions I buy travel insurance it's because I have expensive non-refundable reservations of some sort, typically requiring physical activity that I can't do if I sprain my ankle the week before.
  - jeroenhd 6y ago
    They shouldn't have to compensate if they kept better track of luggage. Right now they have no incentive to improve themselves or prevent theft by underpaid, overworked baggage handlers. Every suitcase is labeled with a name and a flight. They know exactly who the baggage belongs to, they just can't be bothered to call people who forgot a suitcase or send people their luggage back. I don't see why we should accept anything other than either return of the baggage or full compensation.
mattlondon 6y ago
I left a tablet computer behind once on a plane. Easily done - slide down in the magazine holder etc. I phoned the airline. They had found it. Getting it back was impossible. It was apparently sent to Helsinki, then back to Heathrow in London. The airline just say "we had it sent to London - ask there. We're done." Fine, but if you go to LHR and ask where the lost property office is, you are met by blank looks. No one knows. There are 5 4?) terminals, all are huge. Someone says there might be something air side in T3, someone else says there might be something near the car park in T5. Others appear to find the very concept of lost property novel and confusing. I found one place, but they only did lost property for select airlines, and even then it is not open to the public. WTF? It pushes me off to know that my tablet was sold off to someone despite spending ages schlepping around LHR trying to get it, having been in contact with the original airline and having it sent to London.
- ta1234567890 6y ago
  Had a similar experience. Left an iPad on a flight from Paris to Stockholm. Also had to go to a bunch of different places at weird locations of the airports (both in Stockholm and Paris), had to knock on closed doors and ring door bells sometimes for more than 20 minutes, only to be finally told the office was closed that day. It was also super bizarre that a private company, separate from the airlines, was in charge of lost items. I ended up being able to file a lost item claim form on paper at one of the offices, and I also filed a complaint online, but of course nothing came of it. Big effort, zero reward. Very frustrating.
- paulsutter 6y ago
  You needed to call the airline staff at the destinaton airport, not the airport itself. There's a phone number for the local team for the airline. They're not supposed to give it out, but if you ask enough different people someone will.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    If it’s a number “they’re not supposed to give out” how is anyone supposed to know to call this group and not the airport directly?
BogdanPetre 6y ago
is there something similar in Europe?
- kamyarg 6y ago
  Yes, Last year I watched a video of someone traveling from UK to Germany to participate in an auction. It was on youtube, searching for "Germany lost luggage auction" turn a lot of results, could not find the exact one. Edit: found a website: https://www.kofferauktion24.de/ https://www.kofferauktion24.de/
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    > Please note! > Cash only. EC and credit card payments are unfortunately not possible. Wow, the amounts of cash some of the serious buyers must be arriving with!
crazygringo 6y ago
I'm curious why they have their own online store [1] instead of just putting everything up for sale on eBay. People know to shop on eBay, most people have never heard of this store. I know eBay takes a 10% cut, but auctions result in surprisingly high prices, and you also don't have the cost of building and maintaining your own website. [1] https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/pages/shop https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/pages/shop
- remus 6y ago
  Presumably running their own website costs less than the 10% cut ebay would take. Given some of the numbers in the article this seems about right: if you've got enough cash flowing through the business to maintain a 40k sq. ft. warehouse then running a website probably isn't too much hassle.
- zenexer 6y ago
  I looked through the electronics category on their site, and many of the prices were outrageous—sometimes nearly twice as much as buying an item new.[0] You can’t really pull that off on eBay. Most of their inventory appears to be comprised of clothing and accessories. I can’t really assess pricing there, but if it’s anything like the pricing for electronics, they’re preying on impulse buyers. [0]: https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/products/geforce-gtx-1050-ti https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/products/geforce-gtx-1050-t...
  - CompuHacker 6y ago
    I regularly shopped at UBC in person pre-pandemic. Prices for electronics are decided by a group called "Operations" that presumably operates out of an adjacent building. Unmarked items are either withheld from sale for the day, matched to a similar item on shelves, or checked on the spot with a VoIP call to Operations or by a manager, usually by searching eBay. I think the online store was created in response to the pandemic. The amount of care taken to price each item depends on whether it can be identified by brand or model. Items without either usually fall into a generic category based on the shape, weight, and ports. It could be considered "worth it" to dig through every shelf, bin, and table in Electronics for some seriously capable but nondescript tech if there wasn't a pandemic on. The online selection is limited to popular, identifiable items at high prices.
sonofaplum 6y ago
I worked at a summer camp in NE Alabama for two summers in high school and college. Weekend trips to Unclaimed Baggage were extremely popular excursion. Definitely worth a stop if you are in the neighborhood.
- raldi 6y ago
  Is there a store of the same name in Alabama? (Edit: misread)
  - zenexer 6y ago
    No, it’s about a store in Alabama. Are you thinking of Scottsdale, Arizona? That isn’t the location of this store. > If you’ve ever permanently lost a checked bag, your stuff probably ended up for sale at a store in Scottsboro, Alabama. Post-edit reply: again, this article is about a store in Alabama, not Arizona.
timurlenk 6y ago
Nitpicking: the "antique" suitcase in the picture is a very recent suitcase made by Saddleback Leather (worth about 1400$!)
- mcguire 6y ago
  Yeah, there are a few problems with this article. (How do you power a hoverboard by bluetooth?)
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Wireless electricity?
mcguire 6y ago
"The bags have already been screened at the airport, but things often slip through the cracks. Anything of an “illegal nature” (drugs, weapons, unmarked cash) is immediately turned over to the local authorities under lock and key." Relatively recently (I don't go over there often), the store has had a small selection of firearms, I assume from lost checked luggage. As an aside, you know those knives and such confiscated at airport security? States sell them. There is a warehouse in Austin with a bunch of related stuff, including collectible knives if you're interested in such things. It also disposes of retired state office furniture and things like what the GSA sells for the federales at gsaauctions.gov.
tshanmu 6y ago
I had a positive experience at Glasgow airport, a gold/diamond ring left at security was available to collected for a small fee. excellent experience.
russfink 6y ago
I am reading this on a Kindle Fire 8 that I bought there for like $25.
londons_explore 6y ago
Am I correct in saying these goods are still legally owned by their original owner if ever discovered? Meaning if I buy a rare musical instrument from this unclaimed baggage company, I have to live with the possibility forever that someone else might show up at my door with a sheriff and take my musical instrument because they were the original owner?

152 points by Anon84 6y ago

The premise doesn't make sense: these bags are not "lost", they're being sold in a specific store, why aren't the owners looking for them there? The title is misleading but it's explained in the post, these are "unclaimed luggage". Most likely the owner decided to take the compensation option when it was taking too long for the airline to find it. The article does mention a case of someone finding his own item in that store, more by accident than by intentionally looking for it.

yuubi 6y ago
> why aren't the owners looking for them there? Some people live far enough from Alabama that it's inconvenient to visit the store every couple of days to check.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> why aren't the owners looking for them there? I'd have to have something astronomically valuable or personally significant to me in order to go all the way to Alabama and root around in a warehouse just for the off-chance of finding it. Most people aren't flying with the sole manuscript for their novel checked in their baggage. How much time do you think they're going to be willing to invest in getting some old clothes back? They just claim on insurance and forget about it.
- Jedd 6y ago
  > I'd have to have something astronomically valuable or personally significant ... Precisely what's described in TFA. "A presidential platinum Rolex watch worth $64k (sold for $32k)" "A 5.8-carat diamond ring appraised for $46k (sold for $23k)" Or, more poignantly (but perhaps less factually specific) from the intro: "A few days later, a retired mechanic named Charlie buys your grandfather’s watch for $150 ... and ... a nurse from Florida becomes the proud new owner of the scarf your mum knitted you for Christmas." The first couple may be something you'd overlook if $-reimbursed by insurance, but I could imagine circumstances where the last couple of examples would inspire a ceaseless search.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    They're listing outlying extreme cases. Most people aren't travelling with a $64k watch in their checked baggage. It says this in the article only a third of it is worth selling at any price. > In the end, only about one-third of the items in baggage end up for sale
    - Jedd 6y ago
      I think GP was referring to people that desperately wanted their belongings back. I understand that a lot of business flyers would write off their underwear, toothbrush, and gym shoes -- but I don't think GP was suggesting those people should be dumpster diving in Alabamaba. (I'm in Australia, and I really don't have any idea how inconvenient it is to get to Alabama, and to then dive through a warehouse of bags, assuming it's even possible.) > They're listing outlying extreme cases. Most people aren't travelling with a $64k watch in their checked baggage. It says this in the article only a third of it is worth selling at any price. Totally agree - but the point is that in some cases (npi) there clearly were valuables worth the effort, at least from a naive calculation perspective.
      - jakemal 6y ago
        The kinds of people who own watches worth double most people cars most likely have enough money to make losing it a minor inconvenience.
        quickthrowman 6y ago
        As well as the money to pay for theft/loss insurance on their 64k platinum Rolex Day-Date w presidential bracelet. There are also multiples of this watch for ~$25,000 on chrono24, it’s not as desirable like the steel rolexes are.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Though, not to victim blame, but who on earth puts things that are very valuable and aren't even bulky or heavy in their checked luggage? I rarely check luggage (and in >1M miles of travel have never had it permanently lost) but I don't even check things like a favorite pair of custom-made hiking boots.
mcguire 6y ago
"[W]hy aren't the owners looking for them there?" The airline holds luggage for at least 3 months; then there's the time taken to ship it to Alabama, pile it in the corner, sort it, price it, and put it out. I like Scottsboro, but hanging around for months on the off chance that Granma's sweater will show up is just not going to happen. Oh, and it's "Unclaimed Baggage".

darrellsilver 6y ago

This quote is fantastic: > In 1992, Roy Hall, a 46-year-old minister, bought a royal blue Hickey-Freeman jacket at Unclaimed Baggage. When he took it home, he noticed the name “Whitey Ford” — a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Yankees — written inside of it. Informed of the find, Ford asked for his jacket back; Hall decided to keep it. Who cares if it’s true; the minister is like, “return a lost article to its rightful owner? Nah.”

Jedd 6y ago
I've been told that without religion we'd have no morals.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- e40 6y ago
  Yes it’s ironic, that as an atheist, I wouldn’t have done what that minister did.
- NikolaNovak 6y ago
  Ditto; the statement falls apart RAPIDLY upon about 12 seconds examination. Easiest entries are: 1. The extremely diverse morals, frameworks, ethics, and actions different people draw from same source materials. 2. The multitude of ethical frameworks and moral people without religious roots
- mrtweetyhack 6y ago
  Santa exists
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
To be honest, if I paid for a jacket, I'd probably ask that person to pay me for the money I spent...

eatbitseveryday 6y ago

How does the airline have the legal right to sell your items, and at a possibly lower value than the contents are worth? The article says a diamond rings and expensive watches were discovered. $3k in compensation likely seems insufficient.

amadeuspagel 6y ago
If an airline had to compensate people for the full value of their luggage, no airline could bear the risk of transporting luggage at all.
- barrkel 6y ago
  Sure they could. They'd get people to buy insurance before the trip and offload the costs and complexity that way.
  - nogabebop23 6y ago
    You can buy insurance for everything, so I was surprised something as obvious as this isn't available; a quick search found lots of 3rd party baggae insurance policies. If you want to find out the true cost of lost luggage it's some profit margin less than these premiums.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Though I suspect there's quite a bit of adverse selection going on there. I know that on the rare occasions I buy travel insurance it's because I have expensive non-refundable reservations of some sort, typically requiring physical activity that I can't do if I sprain my ankle the week before.
- jeroenhd 6y ago
  They shouldn't have to compensate if they kept better track of luggage. Right now they have no incentive to improve themselves or prevent theft by underpaid, overworked baggage handlers. Every suitcase is labeled with a name and a flight. They know exactly who the baggage belongs to, they just can't be bothered to call people who forgot a suitcase or send people their luggage back. I don't see why we should accept anything other than either return of the baggage or full compensation.

mattlondon 6y ago

I left a tablet computer behind once on a plane. Easily done - slide down in the magazine holder etc. I phoned the airline. They had found it. Getting it back was impossible. It was apparently sent to Helsinki, then back to Heathrow in London. The airline just say "we had it sent to London - ask there. We're done." Fine, but if you go to LHR and ask where the lost property office is, you are met by blank looks. No one knows. There are 5 4?) terminals, all are huge. Someone says there might be something air side in T3, someone else says there might be something near the car park in T5. Others appear to find the very concept of lost property novel and confusing. I found one place, but they only did lost property for select airlines, and even then it is not open to the public. WTF? It pushes me off to know that my tablet was sold off to someone despite spending ages schlepping around LHR trying to get it, having been in contact with the original airline and having it sent to London.

ta1234567890 6y ago
Had a similar experience. Left an iPad on a flight from Paris to Stockholm. Also had to go to a bunch of different places at weird locations of the airports (both in Stockholm and Paris), had to knock on closed doors and ring door bells sometimes for more than 20 minutes, only to be finally told the office was closed that day. It was also super bizarre that a private company, separate from the airlines, was in charge of lost items. I ended up being able to file a lost item claim form on paper at one of the offices, and I also filed a complaint online, but of course nothing came of it. Big effort, zero reward. Very frustrating.
paulsutter 6y ago
You needed to call the airline staff at the destinaton airport, not the airport itself. There's a phone number for the local team for the airline. They're not supposed to give it out, but if you ask enough different people someone will.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  If it’s a number “they’re not supposed to give out” how is anyone supposed to know to call this group and not the airport directly?

BogdanPetre 6y ago

is there something similar in Europe?

kamyarg 6y ago
Yes, Last year I watched a video of someone traveling from UK to Germany to participate in an auction. It was on youtube, searching for "Germany lost luggage auction" turn a lot of results, could not find the exact one. Edit: found a website: https://www.kofferauktion24.de/ https://www.kofferauktion24.de/
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  > Please note! > Cash only. EC and credit card payments are unfortunately not possible. Wow, the amounts of cash some of the serious buyers must be arriving with!

crazygringo 6y ago

I'm curious why they have their own online store [1] instead of just putting everything up for sale on eBay. People know to shop on eBay, most people have never heard of this store. I know eBay takes a 10% cut, but auctions result in surprisingly high prices, and you also don't have the cost of building and maintaining your own website. [1] https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/pages/shop https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/pages/shop

remus 6y ago
Presumably running their own website costs less than the 10% cut ebay would take. Given some of the numbers in the article this seems about right: if you've got enough cash flowing through the business to maintain a 40k sq. ft. warehouse then running a website probably isn't too much hassle.
zenexer 6y ago
I looked through the electronics category on their site, and many of the prices were outrageous—sometimes nearly twice as much as buying an item new.[0] You can’t really pull that off on eBay. Most of their inventory appears to be comprised of clothing and accessories. I can’t really assess pricing there, but if it’s anything like the pricing for electronics, they’re preying on impulse buyers. [0]: https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/products/geforce-gtx-1050-ti https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/products/geforce-gtx-1050-t...
- CompuHacker 6y ago
  I regularly shopped at UBC in person pre-pandemic. Prices for electronics are decided by a group called "Operations" that presumably operates out of an adjacent building. Unmarked items are either withheld from sale for the day, matched to a similar item on shelves, or checked on the spot with a VoIP call to Operations or by a manager, usually by searching eBay. I think the online store was created in response to the pandemic. The amount of care taken to price each item depends on whether it can be identified by brand or model. Items without either usually fall into a generic category based on the shape, weight, and ports. It could be considered "worth it" to dig through every shelf, bin, and table in Electronics for some seriously capable but nondescript tech if there wasn't a pandemic on. The online selection is limited to popular, identifiable items at high prices.

sonofaplum 6y ago

I worked at a summer camp in NE Alabama for two summers in high school and college. Weekend trips to Unclaimed Baggage were extremely popular excursion. Definitely worth a stop if you are in the neighborhood.

raldi 6y ago
Is there a store of the same name in Alabama? (Edit: misread)
- zenexer 6y ago
  No, it’s about a store in Alabama. Are you thinking of Scottsdale, Arizona? That isn’t the location of this store. > If you’ve ever permanently lost a checked bag, your stuff probably ended up for sale at a store in Scottsboro, Alabama. Post-edit reply: again, this article is about a store in Alabama, not Arizona.

timurlenk 6y ago

Nitpicking: the "antique" suitcase in the picture is a very recent suitcase made by Saddleback Leather (worth about 1400$!)

mcguire 6y ago
Yeah, there are a few problems with this article. (How do you power a hoverboard by bluetooth?)
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Wireless electricity?

mcguire 6y ago

"The bags have already been screened at the airport, but things often slip through the cracks. Anything of an “illegal nature” (drugs, weapons, unmarked cash) is immediately turned over to the local authorities under lock and key." Relatively recently (I don't go over there often), the store has had a small selection of firearms, I assume from lost checked luggage. As an aside, you know those knives and such confiscated at airport security? States sell them. There is a warehouse in Austin with a bunch of related stuff, including collectible knives if you're interested in such things. It also disposes of retired state office furniture and things like what the GSA sells for the federales at gsaauctions.gov.

tshanmu 6y ago

I had a positive experience at Glasgow airport, a gold/diamond ring left at security was available to collected for a small fee. excellent experience.

russfink 6y ago

I am reading this on a Kindle Fire 8 that I bought there for like $25.

londons_explore 6y ago

Am I correct in saying these goods are still legally owned by their original owner if ever discovered? Meaning if I buy a rare musical instrument from this unclaimed baggage company, I have to live with the possibility forever that someone else might show up at my door with a sheriff and take my musical instrument because they were the original owner?