We’ve all done it: Forgotten something.
We rush back to the gym for our wallets. We madly dash to the Starbucks for our phones. Sometimes we’re lucky, sometimes we strike out. You would be amazed at what people can forget.
“How do you miss a suit of armor?” Barbara Cantrell wonders aloud — and you would think that she is jaded by this point.
Cantrell has to have one of the best jobs in sales, and also stands at a unique transept between the travel industry and consumerism. As Brand Ambassador for the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, AL, it is her job to sell, and for a song, all the merchandise she and her staff find in the lost luggage accumulated by America’s domestic carriers. That includes, among other things, a full suit of armor.
“We don’t know if the person didn’t claim it, if it was mishandled somewhere along the way, wires got crossed and they just weren’t able to reunite it with the owner,” Cantrell says with a shrug, but its all part of a day’s work.
If you’ve ever wondered where your missing socks go, the Unclaimed Baggage Center (or UBC) is as close to the truth as you get. The 1970 brainwave of creator Doyle Owens, who first began selling off unclaimed items from bus stations, the UBC is now a mammoth, 40,000 square foot space filled with everything that you can loose, forget or abandon. If you ever lost your luggage, permanently, there is a good chance it eventually made its way to this treasure trove in the far northeast corner of the Cotton State.
Loosing luggage is the ultimate pain in the @$$ when you travel, and we all know about the 90-day search airlines carry out when passenger and suitcase become separated. It is, after all, in the carrier’s best interest to keep the two together — few things can trash an airline’s rep like loosing luggage. Around a billion bags get checked every year, and of that number, about one percent of them get lost. There’s a happy reunion within 24 up to 90 percent of the time, and within five days, 95 to 98 percent of that lost one percent make it back to the owner. So all in all, only a very small amount of luggage gets “so lost” as to never find its owners.
So when you enter the Unclaimed Bagged Center, you may ask yourself how a place the size of a city block can be so packed with so much and actually have more waiting in the wings. And here is where Cantrell throws daylight on an airline’s — any airline’s — lost luggage policy: It only covers checked luggage. If you forget something in the cabin, tough luck, honey.
“We purchase items in overhead compartments and backseat pockets, and the airlines do not cover recovery of that in your ticket purchase,” explains Cantrell. “It is the responsibility of the passenger — you chose to carry it with you, it is in your possession. You take your iPad to read, you set it down to take a quick nap, you get off the plane and get to your home or hotel and think, “Where is it?” Well, that plane has since been to five other destinations with three other crews and there is no telling if something has been found or who found it, a crewmember or another passenger. We get a tremendous amount of electronics in that way.”
And clothes, and shoes, and books, and souvenirs and firearms… Some of the UBC’s stock is so inconspicuous you wonder how it could have been missed: professional medical equipment, a six-foot-long casting mold of a shark, a 17-foot-long launchable rocket, a $40,000 diamond bracelet…
“And we have it for $21,797,” says Cantrell of that last one, revealing how the UBC slashes prices so low it is practically bloody. And she should know; the day I met her, Cantrell was wearing a top appraised at $300 that she bought for $6. Nothing at the UBC is sold at full price; everything is discounted. The UBC processes one million items a year, suggesting that lost luggage is the equivalent of nuclear waste: everybody involved wants to get rid of it as fast as possible. Nothing is sacred, not even a diamond bracelet.
The most often way something gets “permanently lost” (assuming it is not abandoned), is inaccurate information, either on the luggage tag or contact information. If owners truly, honestly cannot be found, the airline is literally left holding the bag — and is at a loss as to what to do with it. Cantrell mentioned a bonfire they do in South Africa, and if an item is lost in an airport, rather than an airplane, auctions are the way to go. But if it is on a plane, with its exclusive contacts, in steps the UBC, which regularly buys the items, suitcase and all, at no profit to the carriers.
From there, things are unpacked, categorized, cleaned if necessary and if not shuffled off to the display floor, is put in an annex for later sale. What is deemed unsellable is thrown away, but many found items that are highly specific to their owners are donated — eyeglasses, for example, and prescription sunglasses.
“We get hundreds of thousands of eyeglasses and sunglasses every year, and we donate the majority of those to the Lion’s Club for their Sight First program, where they take them out to other countries and help those who don’t have access to eye-care,” Cantrell tells me.
Of course, there have been a few surprises in the UBC’s 45-year history. Every now and again, it is clear that certain items were lost on purpose.
Says Cantrell, “We find a lot of illegal drugs. We have very good sorters who know when a skirt or a piece of luggage is ‘too heavy.’ When that happens, we have a protocol and contact the authorities.”
At this stage of the game, the UBC has seen so much so often, that even a mother load of heroine would not shock. It would, to be sure, set of a flurry of phone calls, but the offending item, whatever it is, is whisked away with no fuss and no muss if only because of the backlog of new merchandize coming in. Time’s a-wastin’.
And as hinted at by the iPads and jewelry, this is not a low-end establishment. For people with champagne tastes but lemonade budgets, the UBC is a shoo-in to the high-life. Or, at least, the trappings of one. “The Center” has become so popular that it is becoming a destination of sorts; Cantrell mentions how people in the region will often reroute the travel plans to make a stop at the UBC. You never know what you will find.
“The most expensive thing we ever sold was a Rolex watch was the most expensive thing we ever sold; it was valued at $60,000, and we sold it for $32,000 dollars,” Cantrell recalling the one item that still managed to marvel her. “You know, with pieces like that, if somebody can afford a $60,000 watch, I suppose they can afford another $60,000 Rolex.”
Still, 60 grand would hurt just about anybody. So the lesson here is make your luggage as easily found as possible. Make sure the address and tags are up to date and spelled correctly. Make sure the person at check-in gets all the information on your bags correctly. With carry-on, tie a string around your finger if you have to. Because when it comes to your stuff, it is a forgone conclusion that if you loose it, somebody will find it. And there is no guarantee you will get it back.
Steele Luxury Travel
www.SteeleTravel.com