Losing luggage is, at best, annoying; and at worst, tragic. Having anything disappear is a crummy feeling, and one YouTuber has tried to lessen the blow by reuniting owners with their lost items. In a video titled I Bought LOST LUGGAGE and RETURNED IT to the Owner, Hope Allen, aka HopeScope, searches through a trove of abandoned objects to try and find beloved lost things. She has a place to start: the Unclaimed Baggage store in Scottsboro, Alabama. It is the place to look for things lost at the airport or by airlines.
So, how does Unclaimed Baggage work? If/when you lose something, U.S. airlines have 90 days to try and reunite you with your lost bag. In the case where the airline cannot find it, you are reimbursed and the suitcase is later sold to Unclaimed Baggage. According to the store, airlines successfully return your bag 99.5% of the time. But even that half a percent, when there are millions of people traveling a day, adds up to a lot of stuff. Once Unclaimed Baggage has it, workers there sort through luggage and do one of three things: they either sell what’s in the bag, recycle it, or give it to a host of charities.
Over the course of about 14 minutes, Allen shares her journey to reunite owners with their lost items. She begins by asking her Instagram followers about things they’ve lost on vacation. Allen then selects several items to try and find at Unclaimed Baggage. She enters the store with fellow YouTuber Safiya Nygaard, and they get to work. The store is massive, so navigating it took a lot of searching and sifting.
From a Lululemon scarf to a Michael Kors blazer, Allen and Nygaard have their work cut out for them. They could not locate the exact items that folks specified, but they did find things that looked similar. A lost pair of Marc Jacobs sunglasses, for instance, were replaced with a pair of Gucci ones that fit the general description.
Allen then sent the replacement items back to the owners and asked them to film a video reaction of them opening their package. Most seemed excited by their new-to-them pieces, even if they weren’t exactly what they lost.
Scroll down to watch the video. To learn more about the Unclaimed Baggage store, make sure you check out Nygaard’s video that details the logistics of running the emporium.
YouTuber Hope Allen, aka HopeScope, tried reuniting people with their lost luggage by searching through a massive store called Unclaimed Baggage.
Unclaimed Baggage is where permanently lost luggage goes after it leaves the airline. To learn more about this place, watch this fascinating video by Safiya Nygaard.
HopeScope: Website | Instagram | YouTube
h/t:[Reddit]
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