Lost Luggage For Retail

One Person’s Loss, Another’s Person Treasure 

It’s every traveler’s worst nightmare – losing a carefully packed, strategically weighed piece of luggage consisting of all of your personal necessities.

Did you know that on average 1.4 million suitcases are lost each year? What if I told you that your luggage is likely being sent to warehouses and auctioned off for profit? 

Across the world, people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at storage unit auctions. They have become tourist attractions across the world.

In most cases, you can only see what’s inside of the suitcase after purchasing it, so you could end up with name-brand clothing, sporting equipment, electronic devices and jewelry, or in some less fortunate cases, someone’s dirty underwear. But that’s what makes the auction as thrilling as it is.

Social media influencers such as Youtube and Ticktokers have made this a form of entertainment by recording themselves purchasing luggage for thousands of dollars and opening it up on camera for the world to see. And it’s very entertaining to watch what they get as well as their reactions to what they find inside anonymous luggage. 

All sorts of items have been sold at luggage auctions – from expensive clothes and jewelry to Egyptian artifacts, suits of armor, famous puppets from movies, and yes, even rattlesnakes and exotic frogs. 

Losing Luggage is Becoming More Usual

Losing luggage has become so common, and there are a number of reasons why luggage can go missing. From lost to damaged luggage tags and system errors, the airline only gives you 90 days to reunite with your missing luggage. Once that time period has expired, it’s sent off to a warehouse and your chances of ever getting back to your luggage are incredibly slim. 

There have been ironic cases of people going to luggage auctions and finding a pair of ski boots and expensive coats that had been lost in luggage months, or even years ago. But a case like that is rare, so I wouldn’t have high hopes about that kind of thing happening to you. 

Thankfully, there are solutions to this problem. By learning about the different ways a suitcase can go missing, and how to ensure the best protection possible, you will decrease your chances of this ever happening to you while enjoying a care-free glass of prosecco on your flight. 

The Common Reasons Your Luggage Gets Lost

It’s almost too easy to lose your luggage and unfortunately some of the most common reasons as to why your luggage gets lost is out of your control. 

One of the most common reasons is a lost or damaged bag tag. Luggage tags direct airport staff to the whereabouts of your luggage and where it’s going, but when lost or damaged, your luggage will remain at the airport it was dropped off at rather than making it to your final destination. 

Airport luggage labels always have a 2nd smaller label the gate agent should stick on the bag. Make sure they do that. 

Another common reason luggage seems to disappear is an error in your destination code. Airport staff can accidentally type the wrong destination code for your luggage causing it to arrive at a completely different airport or country. Mistakes happen all the time, we are only human. 

Along with the subject of mistakes, it’s common that your luggage can be unintentionally loaded onto the wrong aircraft. If the baggage handler misreads the baggage tag, your luggage can easily end up on the wrong plane. This usually happens when a travel day consists of multiple flights and connection flights. 

Just like airport staff and luggage handlers, we too, can make mistakes. With flight delays, we rush to get from one place to the next, causing us to desert one or even all of our luggage. Being forgetful in a state of chaos and panic is normal and happens to the best of us. 

How To Avoid Losing Your Luggage 

As I mentioned earlier, a damaged or missing luggage tag is out of our control, and unfortunately accidents are bound to happen. But there are ways to avoid this kind of nightmare happening to you. 

Here are a few tips that can increase your chances of reuniting with your lost luggage:

1. Label your baggage on the inside and outside

Before checking a bag, label it. This will be helpful to those looking for your lost luggage once it’s been reported missing. By labeling your name and address to the inside of your luggage can also increase your chances.

2. Color Tag Your Bag

Get a roll of bright tape and wrap a piece around something on your bag. This way you’ll be able to spot your bag while it’s surrounded by thousands of other missing bags. If your luggage is black and plain and carry’s no labels, it’s going to be a lot trickier for the airline to successfully track it down.

3. Take a photograph of your bag

A picture is worth a thousand descriptions. By having a picture of your luggage, you’ll be able to give more insight to the airport staff on what your bags look like so they can have a better chance at finding it and returning it to you.

4. Remove all previous tags

Before checking your baggage, rip off any old baggage tags. This can be confusing to airport staff as they may scan the wrong tag resulting in your luggage going to the wrong location.

Practicing these tips will increase your chances of finding lost luggage, but there is a way of avoiding the time, energy and hassle. 

What Happens To Unclaimed Luggage 

As soon as the unclaimed luggage is reported and sent to lost property, the responsible airline is notified and they begin their attempts to contact the owner. However, this isn’t always successful due to the fact that not all luggage have tags on them providing enough information about the passenger. 

Airlines usually keep unclaimed luggage around the terminal where it was found for approximately five days before shipping it to a central warehouse. After approximately 90 days, if a passenger does not claim their missing luggage and the airline fails to reunite the bags with their rightful owner, the lost items get sent to an unclaimed baggage unit and eventually, sold off to a third-party buyer. There are many reasons why passengers do not claim their missing luggage, one of them being because they simply do not know how to. Losing a baggage is not only stressful, but it can even feel hopeless – like looking for a needle in a haystack. More often than not, after a certain time period, people give up and accept defeat. 

One of the largest and most popular warehouses is located in Scottsboro, Alabama consisting of 40,000 square-feet and roughly 7,000 new items daily. It has become much more than just a thrift store by selling items from expensive watches to engagement rings and wedding dresses, the warehouse has become so famous it has become one of Alabama’s top tourist attractions with around one million visitors a year from all over the world hosting annual events, winter and ski sales, and their very own version of Black Friday. 

With finds consisting of high-end items, from a jacket signed by Paul McCartney, a Versace gown, Vera Wang wedding dresses, platinum rolexes to 5.8 carat diamond bands packed in a sock. The store consists of a women’s and men’s area, kids clothing, sporting goods, books section, formal clothing, and electronics section. It’s just like a thrift store but better. You never know what you can come across and find. It’s one of the coolest attributes of this unconventional shopping experience. 

With so much lost luggage, there has even been a museum created for the weirdest finds, such as a a six-foot-tall paper mache Tinkerbell, a set of McDonald’s arches, a puppet from the movie Labyrinth, live rattlesnakes, 50 vacuum-packed frogs, armor suits, an engraved headstone, and a 4,000 year old mummified hawk. 

Get your luggage back with FOUND ME

FOUND ME is a company that strives to tackle this issue by helping both finder and owner. A FOUND  ME tag consisting of a QR code can help you reunite with your missing luggage before it’s auctioned off to a buyer. When scanned by airport staff, or simply a good samaritan, the finder of your luggage is directly connected to you through a secure and automated chat.

FOUND ME does not have a language or radius barrier, and can help you communicate with the finder of your luggage across the world, despite the language or the location. This solves the issue of a missing or damaged luggage tag by giving anybody the opportunity of helping you get your luggage back quickly and easily.

Increasing Your Chances At Finding Your Suitcase 

Traveling is a stressful experience as it is. From worrying about whether your luggage meets the weight requirement to catching your next flight, it’s hard to keep track of everything all at once. 

With FOUND ME, you can worry less and focus on your other travel responsibilities by securing your luggage with a QR code enabling anyone, anywhere, to help you reunite with your missing luggage. 

To learn more about FOUND ME  tags and stickers and how it can help you reunite with lost belongings, visit FOUND ME