For Sale: 40,000 Square Feet of Lost Baggage
June 22, 2015 9:36 AM   Subscribe

Your lost airline luggage probably ended up at this store You might think that, for such a big store to remain full, there must be an epidemic of lost luggage, but actually just 0.5% of all bags don’t make their way to the baggage carousel posted by Michele in California (57 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I have been there many times before and I can say, that if you are into thrift shopping, it is as cool as it sounds.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 9:38 AM on June 22, 2015 [8 favorites]


At first I felt uneasy about this, but it seems like the airlines do try pretty hard to get the bags back to their owners first.

So instead, now I just want to go there.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:40 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


90% Alitalia bags.
posted by 1adam12 at 9:41 AM on June 22, 2015 [11 favorites]


Hmm, this place is less than three hours away from me. I am having ideas.
posted by workerant at 9:45 AM on June 22, 2015


0.5% is a much, much larger number than I would have expected. That means that on average, one passenger on every 737 flight loses their bags.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:45 AM on June 22, 2015 [32 favorites]


They made no mention of the bodies...ba dam bing!
posted by Oyéah at 9:47 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Actually, reading the source of that 0.5% statistic, I realize I'm misreading it. That's not the percentage that ends up in this store, that's just the percentage that isn't delivered on landing -- most of those 0.5% of bags get to the owner eventually.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:49 AM on June 22, 2015 [15 favorites]


A decent deal of merch in the store isn't even someone's personal effects. Some of it is miss-shiped good from companies. So they may end up with a box full of unopened Ping Pong Balls, or boxes of weight lifting equipment that were too heavy to be worth shipping back to the company.

Great store.
posted by Twain Device at 9:54 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Previously.
posted by anastasiav at 9:54 AM on June 22, 2015


“It’s a last chance,” Little says, “for somebody to make a profit off impulse buys and bad Christmas presents.”

I've deliberately left gifts I didn't care for in the back of the airline seat -- once a hideous seasonal scarf; once a really bad book (read it first); couple of other things I don't recall at the moment. Wonder if the seasonal scarf ever got there, and if so, how much it went for.
posted by holborne at 9:58 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'd like to see a list of the reasons why bags don't make it to the carousel. Wild guesses:

• doesn't get removed from the aircraft at the right airport
• gets transferred incorrectly at a stopover
• falls off the baggage train on the way from the aircraft
• is robotically jettisoned in flight to save weight
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:58 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


The simplest answer: The airlines cannot get the back back to you if they cannot figure out that it belongs to you and where you live.

Multiple tags, in multiple places, inside and outside of the bags, and most importantly, WITH UP TO DATE ADDRESSES. A surprising amount of "permanently lost" luggage has a tag with an old address on it. They ship it to the old address, and you never see it again. So, make sure that you update the tags, and make sure there's one inside the bag, so that if the ones on the outside are gone, they find the one on the inside -- and they will look for one on the inside if they have to -- they will find it and get the bag to you.

After you fly, it's important to take all the tags from the flight off. That include the main tag around the handle, and the "popcorn" -- the tiny stickers they take off the main tag and stick directly to the bag. They do that in case something rips the main tag off. The reason that's important is that if those are still there, and something rips the main tag off a later flight, they can misroute a bag. So, clean bag when you start a flight -- but make sure all your tags are there (and again, have current addresses.)

And, of course, if you're worried about having your personal address on the bag, put your office address on them. That'll get the bag back to you as well.
posted by eriko at 10:01 AM on June 22, 2015 [14 favorites]


once a really bad book (read it first);

I tried doing this on Cathay Pacific in a business class seat and they tracked me down 8 hours later (after a nice nap and a shower) at my departure gate in Narita to return the book to me triumphantly in a flurry of excellent customer service. it was one of the most execrable books i have ever had the misfortune to have publicly returned to me.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:14 AM on June 22, 2015 [64 favorites]


• falls off the baggage train on the way from the aircraft

I've been told that those ~super durable~ hard-shell suitcases are actually way more likely to be lost, because they're slippery. They just slip right the fuck off of whatever stack of baggage they're on/in. And the problem is compounded since baggage handlers prefer to stack them on top so that the other bags don't slide off them, and then they're even more likely to slide off somewhere and be lost.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:14 AM on June 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


I tried doing this on Cathay Pacific in a business class seat and they tracked me down 8 hours later (after a nice nap and a shower) at my departure gate in Narita to return the book to me triumphantly in a flurry of excellent customer service. it was one of the most execrable books i have ever had the misfortune to have publicly returned to me.

This is a metaphor for SOMETHING I just know it
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:15 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm surprised they can keep selling lost luggage in a town of 15,000 people for three decades. I mean, what happens when everyone in town has ten suitcases each? Or do people drive the two and a half hours from Atlanta? That would make for a larger customer base, but it's a long drive.
posted by Triplanetary at 10:16 AM on June 22, 2015


hubris
posted by poffin boffin at 10:16 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Or do people drive the two and a half hours from Atlanta?

I grew up near a large collection of factory outlets, and that place drew tourist traffic from multiple surrounding states. People will drive way the fuck out of their way for a bargain.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:19 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


My luggage was lost last year when I had to check it planeside after the overhead bins filled up, but my suitcase did not end up being transferred at my layover.

I was pretty amazed, however, at how they handled it-- I got a bag of toiletries, an offer for reimbursement up to $50 for anything I bought to tide myself over, and they sent the bag to my hotel only three hours after I got there myself. It went from major inconvenience to a good travel story almost immediately. SORRY ALABAMANS.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:20 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I tried doing this on Cathay Pacific in a business class seat

Luckily I was on United, so I had no need to worry about excellent customer service.
posted by holborne at 10:21 AM on June 22, 2015 [45 favorites]


The simplest answer: The airlines cannot get the back back to you if they cannot figure out that it belongs to you and where you live.

I had a sleeping bag come loose from the suitcase it was attached to, but I had a tag with my name and phone number on it. Someone from the airport called me to get it back to me. It was very nice. So yeah, it helps!
posted by aka burlap at 10:21 AM on June 22, 2015


They also seem to market themselves as a tourist attraction.
posted by Wretch729 at 10:21 AM on June 22, 2015


Multiple tags, in multiple places, inside and outside of the bags, and most importantly, WITH UP TO DATE ADDRESSES.

Important points, all, but let's distinguish between the two major different meanings of 'tag'. There's the label you put on your bag to identify it as your own, and yeah, I have to remind myself to check it for accuracy -- mostly for phone number, though; it's changed three times since my last change of address.

That tag has nothing to do with whether it's waiting on the carousel for you at baggage claim, though. The flight/airport identifying tag (no doubt there's a name for it) is key here, and yeah, there should only be one of those on your bag.

My reason for asking why they get mislaid has to do with identifying procedural improvements. If a major cause of misdirection is old tags being present, then there needs to be a process change: when you check your bag in, the clerk who attaches the tag should be under instructions to search for and remove any older tags still present.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:26 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Actually, reading the source of that 0.5% statistic, I realize I'm misreading it. That's not the percentage that ends up in this store, that's just the percentage that isn't delivered on landing -- most of those 0.5% of bags get to the owner eventually.

Yeah, I was gonna say... 0.5% seemed startlingly high to me, from both sides of the experience: I have taken close to a thousand airline flights in my life, never lost my luggage, and only once had it arrive on the next flight*, and in a decade of working in hotels and hostels seen something like 0.01% of customers lose their bags to an airline.

*It was actually exceedingly convenient, as it turned out: I was coming home from a long trip and stood at the carousel watching it grow emptier and emptier until finally it stopped. I frowned and walked over to the luggage counter and as I approached, the cheerful woman behind the counter called out, "You must be Mr. Biscuit!" My fame preceded me, even as my luggage lagged. She told me it would be on the next flight and it would be delivered to my home. Accordingly I headed home with a jaunty step and maybe ninety minutes after I walked through the door a guy turned up with my bag encased in plastic wrap, had me autograph something on a clipboard, and hey presto, I was reunited my shirts and toiletries.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:28 AM on June 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


That tag has nothing to do with whether it's waiting on the carousel for you at baggage claim, though. The flight/airport identifying tag (no doubt there's a name for it) is key here, and yeah, there should only be one of those on your bag.

Yeah, when you check bags -- at least where I come from -- they attach a little sticker to the back of your boarding pass with a bar code, your last name, and the tracking number for the bag should it be mislaid. It never hurts to have a look at this. Once I happened to look and notice that my surname had been replaced with a very similar one that was probably alphabetically adjacent -- instead of, say, BAXTER, it read BAKER. At my destination, I mentioned this to the airline luggage counter and sure enough, I had a fellow passenger with a similar surname. While I deplaned in Halifax, he and his bags and my bag remained on the plane to travel to its final destination of St.John's, 900 km away. Luckily the airline was able to send a minion into the cargo hold to retrieve my bag before it took a holiday in Newfoundland.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:38 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


She told me it would be on the next flight and it would be delivered to my home. Accordingly I headed home with a jaunty step and maybe ninety minutes after I walked through the door a guy turned up with my bag encased in plastic wrap, had me autograph something on a clipboard, and hey presto, I was reunited my shirts and toiletries.

This seems like an upsell opportunity. Give the airline your itinerary and your baggage arrives an hour or so after you've had a shower and a martini.
posted by notyou at 10:44 AM on June 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


The importance of a bag tags with your address prevents your bag from being LOST. (ending up in this store)

The actual process of getting your bag to the carousel is based on the tag the airline puts on when you check your bag and the bar-code on that tag.

I've worked in the logistics improvement industry for years and 0.5% chance of missing the carousel is a very good number. Think of it in terms of delivery, that isn't 0.5% to accurate destination. That's 0.5% to accurate destination, good condition, not stolen and ON TIME within a 30 minute window. That's radically better than UPS or FedEx would do.
posted by French Fry at 10:46 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


You'd think that there would be some kind of automated code reader for the airline-generated tags, right?

At a conference in Chile: a colleague's bag had gone to SLC, not SCL.
posted by Dashy at 10:47 AM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think the fact that they have a flickr account and an instagram account - with truly decent photos and a sense of humor - is both hilarious and awesome.
posted by flyingsquirrel at 10:54 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Travelling light is the most significant lesson I've learned from my days of seeing too many seatbacks. What you don't tote, you can't lose. It correlates with the old saw that you only truly own what you can't lose in a shipwreck, and that furthermore can't make you wait for three flights at the end of the day in some far-flung rural airport as the airline ships out an entire passengerlist's-worth of misplaced baggage piecemeal to its proper destination.

Most awful thing I had to deliberately lose was an ENORMOUS vanity coffee-table book (it could have doubled as a coffee table) from a Chinese company that decided this was just the not-a-bribe present to give to haggard hacks as they were preparing to shlep back from visiting said company. Too big to fit into anyone's luggage, but of course one mustn't show anything but delighted gratitude. It turns out that the denizens of Beijing and their representatives in aviation are extremely attentive when it comes to spotting and returning goods that detach themselves from their perspiring owners, and it took quite some legerdemain to make it vanish somewhere (not saying where) between hotel and Heathrow.
posted by Devonian at 10:57 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


George_Spiggott: "If a major cause of misdirection is old tags being present, then there needs to be a process change: when you check your bag in, the clerk who attaches the tag should be under instructions to search for and remove any older tags still present."

When I flew a couple of weeks ago, they did indeed instruct us to remove "any barcode stickers" that were on our luggage from a previous trip after they noticed one during the weigh-in.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:02 AM on June 22, 2015


The importance of a bag tags with your address prevents your bag from being LOST. (ending up in this store)

Yes. A bag that arrives late, or gets sent to the wrong airport is a mishandle, to use the old TWA term for it. I don't know if that's universal in the industry or other airlines have other names for it. With a mishandle, they know where it is, it's just not in the right place at the right time. If you make a very tight connection, the bag will almost certainly mishandle, because you can move a lot faster than the bag. In this case, the bag will be on the next plane going there. (That could be a day or two later, of course...) If it's got a valid flight tag on it and the airline knows where you are, you'll eventually get the bag.

Other mishandles -- someone misread the tag and threw it on the wrong belt/cart (LAX/LAS was common) or a tag fell off and they had to ID the person, then figure out what flight they were on and retag, and by the time they did, the original flight left. That's why the new tags, which are much tougher and have the "popcorn" stickers are so much better, you almost never need to play "what flight was he on?" You just slap a retag tag on it, put in on the right flight, they retag at the next stop where's there is (usually) more time.

The most common lost: Someone grabs the wrong bag, pulls the flight tags off, goes home, realizes it isn't their bag, and brings it back. It doesn't have the flight tags, and it doesn't have a good name tag. That's where the inside name tags get your bags back. The popcorn stickers help here too -- if they haven't pulled those off yet. So, make sure it's your bag before you pull tags off. They really do help get the bag to the right place if it's not. That's where the colored flags and oddball stickers and other things that make it your bag and NOT their bag helps, because EVERYBODY has black bags. Seriously. Get not-black bags and then do something to them to make them obviously unique. Most people don't mean to take your bags, really. They're just tired and want to get home.

2nd most common: Theft. Nothing you can do if they're intentionally stealing the bag and get away with it, and there are thieves out there, but what they want is nice generic bags that everybody has that don't stand out. You know, boring black bags.

And don't check anything you can't afford to lose. Really.
posted by eriko at 11:03 AM on June 22, 2015 [8 favorites]


We used to have an unclaimed baggage store in Ottawa, maybe it closed 15 years ago?. I'd go there and buy up mystery tapes from around the world for super cheap. That was how I first got in to ragas.
posted by Theta States at 11:06 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


there are thieves out there, but what they want is nice generic bags that everybody has that don't stand out. You know, boring black bags.

Ideally your bag should have stickers and patches with marijuana leaves, anarchy slogans and Arabic-looking script plastered all over it. Ain't nobody gonna pick that up in an airport who doesn't have to. Plus it's a great way to meet interesting officials and spend your airport waiting time in quiet rooms away from the common herd without spending money on elite club memberships.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:24 AM on June 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


This is a smashing opportunity for someone to own slightly used Briggs and Riley luggage.

It is the best stuff I've ever used, has a lifetime warranty. Considering how bloody expensive it can be, even at the outlet level, it would be worth a significant trip out there. Hmmm.
posted by Thistledown at 11:31 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I once had a vivid dream that I went to one of these lost luggage facilities and found trunks and trunks full of 1960s marching band costumes.
posted by vunder at 11:33 AM on June 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


I'd like to see a list of the reasons why bags don't make it to the carousel. Wild guesses:

* It was handled by Philadelphia International Airport
posted by delfin at 11:38 AM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


The two instagram photos in the FPP article are FANTASTIC FINDS.

This also led me to realize that there is an unclaimedbag Instagram feed.
posted by mcstayinskool at 11:38 AM on June 22, 2015


I was introduced to the store by a good friend who is a costumer for film and theater. So if you've ever lost a bag, your clothes might wind up on a zombie in The Walking Dead.
posted by vibrotronica at 12:22 PM on June 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


I was just driving through Alabama yesterday, dammit! Although I do have to assume my husband and the five kids in the van with me wouldn't have approved a side trip from south Alabama to north Alabama to buy suitcases that wouldn't have fit in the van anyway.

Protip: when you're traveling with a two year old and four year old and have checked the carseats - when one carseat shows up on the belt at baggage claim, don't announce "Yay! We can bring ONE of you home!" (They lent us a car seat to get home that night and found the other one and brought it to our house the next day. Only ONE of the kids is currently in therapy, which is surely just a coincidence.)
posted by artychoke at 12:35 PM on June 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


United lost one of my friends' bags on a flight from Dulles to Beckley, WV last year.

The plane pulled into the "terminal," they shoved a cart full of bags through the door, and the plane took off with all of the airport's United employees on it before my friend even completed the short walk from the plane to the terminal.

My friend's there; his bags were not, nor is there a single employee from the airline. In fact, the airport was literally devoid of any personnel apart from a single TSA agent who was on her lunch break, and ended up being the only empathetic person we encountered all day.

Call United: After 30 minutes on hold, they tell us to go to a baggage counter, and seemingly cannot understand that Beckley, WV does not have a baggage counter, or really any humans to speak of at all. Finally, they tell us to call the regional carrier that operated the flight.

Call the regional carrier: United runs the baggage system. There's literally nothing the carrier can do, and they'd really like it if United stopped sending these inquiries their way.

Several more calls to United and the Regional carrier yield no results. So far, this has consumed over 6 hours of our vacation, and we finally leave the airport.

Friend #2 arrives in DC, and is about to head to the airport to take the evening flight to Beckley to meet us. Why are there so many flights to Beckley?

He is a United Platinum flyer. He calls United, and says "Hey, I'm flying out to meet my buddy, and you lost all of his luggage. Can you look for it?"

After about 2 minutes on hold, the operator comes back "Yes, I see they held his bags in Dulles because the plane was overweight. Because he has a return flight booked, we typically just hold those bags at the origin."

"Well, Friend #1 has some of my clothes in his luggage, so we kind of need those bags"

"No Problem, Friend #2. We'll hold the departure of the plane until those bags are loaded"

So, basically, United never actually lost my friend's bags, and were lying through their noses to us about it. They only gave a fuck once a wealthier customer got involved.

Fuck United.
posted by schmod at 12:40 PM on June 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


I refuse to ever fly UsAirways again after they lost my bag in 1998 when I was flying home for my grandfather's funeral, gave me some shitty $50 voucher and forms to fill out if they never found my bag. Which they never did; the forms required a US address and only had a US toll free number for information. I remember the sheer perky we-don't-give-a-fuck condescending attitude of the baggage claim staff as they told me they were sorry about my grandpa but this is all we can do sugar, and if you make a claim you probably won't get much.

I will fly Alitalia a thousand times over than put another foot on USAirways. (Besides Alitalia's flights to the US are usually code shared with Delta...)
posted by romakimmy at 1:24 PM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I still don't understand why when the Bombay tiffin lunch service can achieve a 99.999999 success rate, that airline baggage so frequently goes missing.

Also fuck united.
posted by piyushnz at 1:31 PM on June 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Fuck United.

I've seen that t-shirt.
posted by yoink at 2:22 PM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


The 0.5% figure seemed high to me, too. Here are some other numbers:

Baggage Claim: Airlines Are Winning the War on Lost Luggage
  • Airlines last year mishandled 21.8 million bags, or 6.96 per 1,000 passengers
  • That's well less than half the rate in 2007, when airlines world-wide mishandled 46.9 million bags, or 18.88 per 1,000 passengers
  • Repatriating delayed or lost luggage to passengers cost an average of $100 per bag
  • When bags do go missing, [...] 81% get delivered to passengers unscathed
Best and Worst Airlines for Lost Luggage
  • American Eagle is the worst, 5.80 "baggage reports" per 1,000 passengers
  • ExpressJet, SkyWest, Mesa, are next-worst, in that order
  • United is the worst major national carrier, 3.87 reports per 1,000; it was doing better but tanked after the Continental merger
  • Southwest is 3.08 per 1,000 which is high, but they have a low number of overall complaints, which is interesting
  • Delta, JetBlue, and Airtran are some of the best, with 2.10, 1.88, and 1.58 reports per 1,000 passengers respectively
  • Virgin America is the best, with only 0.87 reports per 1,000 passengers.
So I think the "0.5%" number (5 per 1,000) is a mis-statement of the number of "baggage reports", which don't necessarily imply that someone's luggage is lost forever, just that it doesn't show up at its intended destination on time, or that there are missing contents. The actual number of truly "lost" bags is lower than that, somewhere around 0.1% (2 per 1,000) on a crappy airline, and potentially something down around 0.02% on a good airline like Virgin. (This assumes that the 80% recovery rate is basically constant across all airlines, which we don't know, but seems reasonably safe.)

So, framing it differently, a good airline might be said to be 99.98% effective at eventually getting your bag back to you, in some fashion. It's not exactly "five nines" reliability, but it's not 1 passenger in 200 having to replace their entire wardrobe either.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:47 PM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I fly United a lot, and I heartily agree with the assessment that their customer service makes Wal-mart look good. When they lose your bag, tell them it'll be easy to find in a few days when 5 pounds of andouille turns. Your bag might beat you home.
posted by wintermind at 3:11 PM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am apparently an incredible outlier, because I've been in that .5% at least five times, that I remember. My immediate family also accounts for a half dozen or occurrences.
posted by sonic meat machine at 3:20 PM on June 22, 2015


The Dabbawala tiffin lunch service in Mumbai is by some metrics the best delivery service in human history, it's a pretty high bar for just about anything.
posted by French Fry at 4:20 PM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'll have a soft spot in my heart forever for Aer Lingus for returning our (lost) bag to us after an American Airlines return flight. We had left on the Aer Lingus ID tag (not the barcoded one), and one of their folks noticed it, figured out who we were, and called us to confirm they'd found it - then brought it to our door (we live about 50 miles from the airport! This is after repeated calls/e-mails to AA - and the bag was found at our destination airport, to boot. hmph
I've never flown AA again.
posted by dbmcd at 6:28 PM on June 22, 2015


I should perhaps soften my stance on united as I have just received word that my bag has been located after being missing for 9 days and will be delivered tomorrow... But I'm not feeling it.
posted by piyushnz at 7:51 PM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Neither one of the links mentions what might not be obvious to people unfamiliar with the Bible Belt – the place is closed on Sundays. I found this out when I went to Scottsboro last July to visit its museum less than a quarter-mile down the road.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:09 PM on June 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Previously.

I was wondering if someone would mention the fate of Hoggle. Always figured he would have ended up in the bog of eternal stench myself. Might have been better off there.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:33 PM on June 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I hate checking bags. I carry on as much as I can when I have to fly. I hate flying also.

That said, I used to work for Virgin America and heard year after year that we had the lowest percentage of lost bags - see also Kadin2048.
posted by bendy at 12:07 AM on June 23, 2015


If the electronics section in this place is anything like the lost and found at an airport, it must be a fucking goldmine.

Like, where's the mountains of ipads and shit? it's gotta be there.
posted by emptythought at 3:42 AM on June 23, 2015


I really, really want to go to this place, but I really, really do not want to have to go to Alabama to do so.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:35 AM on June 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


After some luggage problems on our last trip, the SO bought a big bright ID tag for our bags, filled it out in full, put it right on top, the whole nine yards.

on his way back from London, his luggage went missing, because someone with the same bag and the same color tag picked it up without thinking and took it on a little trip to Boston.
posted by The Whelk at 8:02 AM on June 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


At first I thought maybe they sold the luggage with all the contents still in there sight unseen just like Storage Wars. I'd be into that. I bet you'd find some weeeiiiiird stuff.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:58 AM on June 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


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