Tag: luggage

Recycled Airbags

As I build the beginnings of this week’s blog post (three “b”s already for those keeping count) my screen distracts me with alerts for Cyber Monday deals. Laptops at 30% off retail. E-readers at 25% off. DNA tests at 70% off (which begs the question: do we really care about our ancestry anymore?) Cyber Monday is a sort of second chance for those who shunned the big box stores the Friday after Thanksgiving (good decision). But here’s what I wonder today. Why endure Black Friday or get distracted by Cyber Monday when you can shop through lost luggage any day of the year instead?

I’ve finally found a reason to visit Alabama.  A six-hour drive due west of my keyboard puts me in the little town of Scottsboro, of which an entire block is consumed by a business known as Unclaimed Baggage.  UB is exactly what you think it is: deep-discounted personal belongings made available to you by the traveling misfortunes of others.  Think of UB as one person’s trash becoming another person’s treasure only, of course, the original owner had no intention of throwing it away.

“Where’s my owner?”

Unclaimed Baggage is the kind of entrepreneurial enterprise I wish I’d thought up myself.  Consider the end-to-end process.  You and your luggage start at Point A, but sadly one of you doesn’t make it to Point B.  The airline (or the bus or the train) spends several months trying to reunite the two of you.  Failing that, they compensate for the loss (sometimes).  But what of your bag if it turns up later?  Dump it into a “Dead Luggage” office?  Actually, yes, and then Unclaimed Baggage comes a-calling.

Here’s an encouraging stat: 99.5% of lost luggage is reunited with its owner.  You wouldn’t think Unclaimed Baggage could make a business of the leftovers.  But those leftover are, on average, 7,000 items every day.  No wonder Unclaimed Baggage needs a city block to house all that it sells.  And the best part of the business?  UB never knows what it’s going to get because the airlines don’t (or aren’t allowed to) open the bags.  It reminds me of the show where bidders vie for contents of storage lockers without being able to raise the roll-up doors beforehand.

The most expensive item UB ever sold was a Rolex watch for $32,000 (50% of retail).  Visit the store today and you can purchase a diamond ring for $20,000 that surely appraises for more.  Some items are so strange they’re relegated to an area known as the “Museum Gallery”.  Wigs. Shark teeth.  A funeral casket key (?)  Items considered “unsaleable”, and items where you have to wonder why they were on an airplane in the first place. 

Treasures from chests suitcases

When I first learned about Unclaimed Baggage I thought, they have something of mine and I want it back!  No, I’ve never lost luggage.  Rather, I’m the passenger who keeps forgetting the little things in the seat back pocket right in front of him.  Reading glasses.  E-readers.  A rather expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones.  Somehow my stuff gets left behind despite the pointed announcement from the flight attendant: “Please check in and around your seat for personal belongings, as you will not be allowed back on the aircraft after you deplane.”  Sigh…

Unclaimed Baggage has at least one example of an item unintentionally returned to its original owner.  At UB’s annual ski sale (which earned an LOL from me; I mean, just how many skis are left at baggage claim?), a shopper purchased ski boots for his girlfriend.  When he brought them home, she discovered initials on the inside of the boots – hers.  The airline had already compensated her for the lost boots so effectively, she re-owns her boots at a deep discount.

Time is cheap at Unclaimed Baggage

As you might expect, a good percentage of shoppers at Unclaimed Baggage are the same ones who troll garage sales and eBay for items they have no intention of owning.  They simply relist their wares online for purchase (and profit) from others.  It’s another enterprising way to make a buck but it’s not my cup of tea.  I’m the shopper who shows up at sales well after the best items have been picked over.

Unclaimed Baggage has cornered a lucrative market.  I don’t think they have any competition for the business of repurposing lost luggage.  I will say this: I’m less likely to leave my stuff on airplanes now that I know about UB.  I mean, do I really want some stranger buying my stuff for way less than I paid for it myself?

Final thought for the day.  Why don’t they call it Unclaimed Luggage?  Baggage?  Luggage?  Bag?  Lug?  Who the heck added two words into the English language when we only needed one?  The Oxford English Dictionary estimates we use 170,000 words these days.  I’m here to say that’s one too many.

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “US travelers lose millions of suitcases every year…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Bad Check

Last week I flew to Indiana for a conference, connecting briefly through Chicago O’Hare.  After finally touching down and exiting the tiny plane, I noticed a cluster of passengers right there in the jet bridge, waiting for luggage to be brought up the stairs.  I headed to the baggage claim area instead, where the rest of us watched the carousel lumber round and round.  The minutes passed interminably as the belt continued its relentless rotation; passengers leaving one-by-one with their bags.  Suddenly everything came to a grinding halt, and the carousel let out its big, mechanical sigh.  I found myself in the quiet and solitary confinement of an empty claim area.  My luggage?  Nowhere to be found.

The airlines advertise a ton of performance statistics, but here’s a new one on me: rate of mishandled bags.  For every passenger who files a lost-luggage report, the carrier gets a ding.  That ding is well-deserved, representing the stress of lost luggage, the hassle of filing a report in one of those stuffy little offices, and the inevitable delay reuniting with your bag.  Not that it happens very often.  According to the following chart – part of a Wall Street Journal article – American Airlines reports a mere 2.8 incidents of lost luggage per 1,000 passengers.  But hold the phone, folks – there’s more to the losing than meets the eye.  Turns out American (and most other airlines) avoid a lost-luggage ding if they alert you to the “mishandled” bag.  Today’s smart tags make it easy to track the bag (even if it’s heading in a different direction than you are).  So that bit of information – proactively communicated in a text or email – avoids a bad stat.  And that’s why the chart below shows a dramatic improvement in August.  American Airlines started its proactive notification process the month prior.

I don’t choose my airline according to “rate of mishandled bags” (or any other statistic for that matter – it’s all about the ticket price), but I have observed the adjusted behavior of others.  Carry-on baggage is all the rage now, in brand-new shapes and sizes.  Look around next time you board a plane and count how many passengers violate the airline’s carry-on policy.  The person with the roll-y suitcase and oversized backpack is probably one bag over the limit.  The person with the valise slightly larger than the space “under the seat in front of you” probably should’ve checked it.  But chances are the flight attendant won’t make a fuss, at the risk of negative publicity.

Speaking of backpacks, the oversized versions seem to be all the rage these days; far surpassing the number of “wheelies” and “over-the-shoulder’s” so common with past generations.  It’s like everyone’s back in high school again.

Here’s another trend.  Passengers carry-on instead of checking, knowing there isn’t enough room in the overhead bins.  Once the bins are full, they surrender their bags at the end of the jet bridge instead, for attendants to tromp down the stairs and into the belly of the plane.  After landing, the process works in reverse (thus the cluster of passengers on my recent flight).  But credit to these travel warriors; they avoid $50 of baggage fees, as well as smashing bags into overhead bins (which always brings to mind square pegs and round holes).

One more trend.  Airlines are shifting the baggage-check process into the hands of travelers.  At self-check-in, the kiosk now dispenses a bag tag along with the boarding pass.  You attach the tag to the bag.  You haul the bag to the belt, where – in some cases – you place the bag on the belt.  Congratulations – you’re an airline employee working free of charge.  You might even be helping the airline avoid a mishandled bag stat.

My own lost-luggage story had a happier-than-expected ending.  At the baggage service office, the attendant took my tag into the back, reappearing moments later with my bag.  Turns out my suitcase flew on another plane, arriving at my same destination before I did (explain that bit of magic, please).  Crisis averted, but instead I lost my excuse to go purchase a suitcase of new clothes.