Getting Lost in Lost & Found
 

Most of you know that if you lose anything on commercial airliner, it ends up in a Scottsboro, Alabama, warehouse, where it languishes until either claimed or -- after 45 days -- is sold. If you use the airline web site to report a lost item, the data actually goes to a database at lostandfound.aero, a server for which general public access is blocked.

Most U.S. airlines use the same company -- Unclaimed Baggage Center, based in Scottsboro but with warehouses in sundry cities.

I was able to reclaim my lost Kindle, and paid $15 shipping to get it back. So far, so good. I charged the shipping fee to my Delta Amex.

However, when I tried to use the Amex charge card's phone and web site contact info for the company, it turns out Amex had associated the phone number of an unrelated Alabama mortgage company! The nice woman who answered the phone explained that she gets several calls a day from people trying to reach Unclaimed Luggage, but has been unable to find out where the misinformation is coming from.

I told her: Amex. She seemed pleased to know. Took me another hour to find the correct contact info of the lost & found warehouse:

The actual Unclaimed Baggage phone number is +1 (256) 259-1525 and their real public-facing web site is https://<span style="color:#444746">...age.com</span>. To dispense info about a specific item, they need the claim number issued when you reported the item lost to the airline.

Frequent travelers might want to add that phone number and web site to your mobile phone contacts.

I went to the place in Alabama once (during the late 90s) and it honestly just seemed like a plus sized Goodwill store. A lot of the stuff was really old and they sold some products that were clearly created for their sales channel (sort of like factory outlet malls).

So, I assumed that the notion that most lost luggage ends up there was an urban myth that those guys were happy to perpetuate.

It took me a couple of seconds to find their phone number by Googling "Unclaimed Baggage Center."

It's in the side panel to the right of the search results:And by the way, you posted an invalid URL for their website, the correct one is: https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/