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If an airline misplaces your luggage and cannot find it within a reasonable time, the carrier must pay for your loss. If you accept the compensation, that ends the airline’s liability to you, and your belongings are considered permanently gone. But could your missing property eventually reappear on display at Unclaimed Baggage, a resale shop in rural Alabama?
Unclaimed Baggage is an unusual place where all sorts of lost items get a new lease on life.
Here’s what I learned about America’s only retail store that buys, restores and then sells travelers’ orphaned stuff.
Earlier today I took a test run on my treadmill wearing sneakers that previously belonged to someone else. All I know about that stranger is that we share the same foot size and taste in running shoes. I can also assume that an airline lost her luggage with the cute pink and grey Skechers inside.
I’ll give you the results of my three-mile jog trying out my new used shoes in a moment. But first let me tell you how they came to be in my possession.
What an airline owes you if it permanently loses your checked luggage
Travelers with damaged or missing baggage often contact Consumer Rescue for guidance.
For domestic flights in the United States, the Department of Transportation sets the airlines’ liability limit for lost and damaged baggage at $4,700 — per passenger, not per bag. The Montreal Convention has a much lower liability limit for international flights at just around $2,175. Again, that is per passenger so beware if you’re checking multiple bags on a flight. You may need to consider travel insurance to increase your protection.
By that time, their luggage has typically been officially categorized as lost, and reimbursement claims are in the process. Even so, many are still hoping to reunite with their belongings, which often include special souvenirs and favorite clothing.
However, the reality is that after an airline considers a bag lost, the active search for it is mostly over. So when an American Airlines passenger told me that AA had given her a used suitcase on the spot after a handler ruined hers, I was curious.
Where did that used bag come from, and how did it become available for the airline to give away? It was obviously someone else’s luggage at some point. So, as I often do, I went down a rabbit hole to find out the answer.
What to know: Unclaimed Luggage in Scottsboro, Alabama
My online search led me straight to Unclaimed Baggage.
The company, which surprisingly has been around since 1970, has purchasing agreements to acquire unclaimed items with all the major US-based airlines and other companies in the travel sector (like bus and train lines).
While Unclaimed Baggage accepts everything that airlines send its way, not everything is suitable for reselling. Each day, employees review new arrivals to determine what can be cleaned, resold, donated, or recycled.
The inventory online and in the 50,000 square-foot store changes daily with merchandise ranging from clothing to jewelry to electronics and more.
How a lost item makes its way to Unclaimed Baggage
When an object is left behind on an aircraft or on a baggage carousel, it isn’t immediately sent down south. Typically most airlines will attempt to reunite the abandoned item with its owner for 90 to 120 days.
After that time, the stuff will be boxed up and sold in bulk, sight unseen, to Unclaimed Baggage. It will soon be on a tractor trailer heading to Alabama where everything inside will pass through the store’s rigorous inspection center.
The company’s description of the journey from the airport to the shelf at Unclaimed Baggage is reminiscent of The Island of Misfit Toys. If you’re unfamiliar with that fictional place, it was an island where a hodgepodge of abandoned (and depressed) toys were sent because no one wanted them. The good news for them was that Santa eventually found them all new homes.
Unclaimed Baggage has a similar goal. The items it receives each day are deep-cleaned, polished and made as presentable as possible to appeal to new owners. However, unlike Santa, this store rescues the unwanted property to sell for a profit. It is not a thrift shop. While deals and bargains can be had, much of the merchandise would be considered competitively priced.
Before anything is offered for resale, its condition is rated and a price is set based on its condition.
Not my first online shopping experiment
After getting a good overview of the company, and scrolling the Unclaimed Baggage site, I decided I better do some investigative shopping.
Full disclosure: I admit, I used the premise of this article as an excuse for some retail therapy but still I hope you’ll find the results of my shopping experiment helpful. 😜
First, you should know that I’m not new to taking a chance and buying things that seem unusual or possibly a waste of money.
I once became so curious about a little “washer and dryer” that Temu was advertising for $5 with free shipping, that I purchased it. I just wanted to see what would show up at my house. My husband and kids warned me that it was a scam. But I was undeterred. It was an experiment after all.
Soon, a box from Temu arrived, and inside was this pink tabletop washer and dryer. We all laughed as I unboxed it. As it turns out, the little appliance wasn’t terrible after all. I continued my experiment and washed and dried a few socks in it… and it worked.
It’s only suitable for undergarments, but for $5, I would say it was a good deal. I certainly would have enjoyed having this little contraption like this in college.
Online shopping at Unclaimed Baggage
The Unclaimed Baggage store has become quite a tourist attraction in Alabama, and if lived a bit closer my experiment would have included a visit. But since I am nearly 1,000 miles from Scottsboro, it would be an online shopping excursion for me.
My first task was to decide what I was going to buy. I wanted to keep the stakes low, so since my oldest daughter had just ruined my favorite pair of Skechers by stuffing her feet into them (we do not share the same foot size), I decided to see what Unclaimed Baggage had in the shoe department.
All of my sneakers are Skechers so I’m very familiar with the cost of the shoes. That detail would help me to decide whether the sneakers were a good deal or not.
Unclaimed Baggage makes shopping online as easy as other retailers. I was able to enter my shoe size and preferred brand to begin my search. To my surprise, two pairs of exactly my sneaker style and in my size appeared. Of course, I assumed this was fate.
I clicked each one, and that’s where Unclaimed Baggage revealed the shoes’ condition.
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Unclaimed Baggage deemed one pair as “excellent” for $32, and the other as “good,” so it discounted the price to $16.99. I decided to buy both pairs to get an idea of the difference in real life between these conditions. The price for each was a considerable discount for a brand new pair of skechers in their style.
I put the sneakers in my cart and went to the checkout.
If you’re like me, you probably expect free online shipping in most cases. Unclaimed Baggage only offers free shipping with purchases of $100 or more. That wasn’t an amount I was willing to spend on this experiment so I paid the $11 shipping for my new sneakers. I also received a first time 20% off discount so that lowered my risk a bit in case this turned into a shopping fiasco.
With my purchase confirmed, all I needed to do now was wait for my “reclaimed” shoes to arrive.
It would be a long wait.
Yikes!: Here’s why you shouldn’t claim to be fatally injured on a flight when you weren’t
Finally USPS delivers my package
Amazon same day delivery has really raised consumer expectations of how fast online purchases should arrive. At least that’s true for me. So a few days after my online shopping trip to Unclaimed Baggage I was becoming impatient. There was no sign of my package and no indication of when it might arrive.
About a week later, USPS told me it would deliver in 5 days. I don’t know the exact shipping method I paid for with my $11, but it seemed like USPS sent my package from Alabama in the slowest possible way.
Finally, two weeks after my experiment began, my mailman delivered my sneakers in a big orange bag.
Now it was time for the “Unbagging.”
The unbagging of my Unclaimed Baggage
If you like keeping your shoes in their original boxes, you won’t like this part. Of course, since these Skechers were, until recently, someone else’s, they did not come with their original packaging. They arrived in two individual plastic bags.
Right off the bat, things were impressive. Although Unclaimed Baggage only rated the shoes on the left as “good,” they appeared like new.
Unclaimed Baggage says it thoroughly cleans every item to the highest standards. That certainly appeared true with both pairs of shoes they sent me.
The grey pair of sneakers are running shoes, so it was time to try them out on my daily treadmill run. I have a similar pair of Skechers in black so I know how they should feel.
The moment of truth: going for a run in my new sneakers
I popped those shoes on my feet and turned on my music. It was time for the moment of truth. Would these be an experiment gone wrong or would it be a win?
The verdict is…
Running in my “used” Skechers felt just like running in new shoes. They needed a little stretching. But except for a tiny blemish on the sole of the sneakers, there is nothing about them that make them look or feel like secondhand shoes.
The other pair aren’t for running, but they were similarly in meticulous shape.
Uh-oh: What happens if an airplane runs over your bags?
The bottom line
All in all, this was a fun experiment. Browsing through all the items for sale at Unclaimed Baggage was… interesting. There are lots of things to choose from, and the inventory literally changes day by day. Some things are quite unusual — like the “Intimates Mystery Box.” (Um…no, that was not an experiment for me.)
One thing to remember if you do take a shopping trip to the online store, is that these are unique items. So if you see something you like, you do have to act quickly or someone else might grab it first. I put a pair of Prada sunglasses in my shopping cart, and then did a little more browsing. By the time I tried to complete the purchase they were gone.
It was all for the best; I didn’t need a new pair of sunglasses anyway. (Michelle Couch-Friedman, Chief Fiasco Fixer and founder of Consumer Rescue)
Before you go: Why did Marriott store our luggage in a garbage can?!
