The secret afterlife of lost German luggage

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/23/travel/germany-lost-luggage-auction.html

by bookofjoe • 7 years ago

125 61 7 years ago

Is the auctioneer a distant cousin of Bruce?

blondin• 7 years ago

took me a second to figure out that i needed to use the arrow keys. also i read saugage at first... but very interesting story :)

threeseed• 7 years ago

There's a Youtube channel where they had a competition to see who could make the best outfit from lost British luggage. It was the same sort of auction so maybe this is a pattern in other countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ortv_e-G0bk

reaperducer• 7 years ago

There are a number of auctions in the United States that auction off not only lost airline luggage but also actual airline surplus materials.

Some are run by liquidation companies and some are run by the airlines themselves.

masteruvpuppetz2• 7 years ago

mirror?

adventured• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/EqgDw6

masteruvpuppetz2• 7 years ago

thanks :)

imwally• 7 years ago

The Instagram story-esque design is an interesting take. I'm viewing this on a desktop but I'm not sure how I feel about it. Usually I prefer scrolling but I suppose it works well with the high-res photos.

tartoran• 7 years ago

NYT like other media companies are expermimenting with different formats. Some are more interactive than others. I personally am not too crazy about this one because at least on my phone it appears as if poorly formatted and when swiping a slide back activates to the browser back command.

When at work I noticed that I almost always avoid these types of format especially when it take over the whole screen and have conspicuous animations.

system2• 7 years ago

BBC does this a lot.

gumby• 7 years ago

I feel the opposite. Rather than read a story I read a bunch of disconnected snippets, like tweets. The separation was magnified by the need to click for each snippet. It's hard to remember what I read.

Sabinus• 7 years ago

I kinda liked it. Clean interface, gorgeous photo/gif first design.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 7 years ago

Once I figured out that it was a slideshow and not a broken page I liked the format. They should have a highly visible arrow to the right though, since scrolling and pressing the down key do nothing.

freeflight• 7 years ago

That actually sounds like quite a fun job, figuring out ways to trace the owner of luggage based on its contents, a bit like playing low stakes detective. I wonder if they learned a specific trade to work there?

Fun fact: In the early 90s, there used to be a whole German TV show around the concept of auctioning lost luggage from airports and exploring their contents, Koffer Hoffer [0].

[0] https://youtu.be/-qE--luAfAU

paulgerhardt• 7 years ago

There’s a store like this in Alabama also profiled many times appropriately called ”Unclaimed Baggage” and acts as a clearing house for most of the US lost bags.

Since 9/11 and newer TSA regulations have gone into effect, as well as just how much better we’ve gotten at tracking bags electronically, the quality and churn at the store has kind of plummeted.

One thinks one may pick up some Ming Dynasty vase or fossilized velociraptor eggs lost in transit (and to be sure there were good deals back in the day) but the reality now is more like a large thrift store. We all grumble about air travel but “lost bags” feels like something that’s gotten markedly less common over the past 20 years.

s0rce2• 7 years ago

But you can get great deals on TSA confiscated pocket knives and corkscrews.

https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=2341&...

mindslight2• 7 years ago

Similarly, you can get great deals on stolen items on craigslist.

unixhero• 7 years ago

This simply is stealing. Thanks for the link, I'm now disgusted.

GordonS• 7 years ago

Anecdotal, but I used to fly regularly with British Airways, and between 2000-2010 or so, they would frequently lose my bags - maybe 25% of the time, no exaggeration. As something of a blessing, it was always on the return journey.

But since 2010, I don't think I've had a single lost bag!

ehnto• 7 years ago

Did you change how you packed while it was an issue?

dspillett5• 7 years ago

A large chunk of this will just by improved procedures and tech† generally, driven by the desire for efficiency improvements, so it would have happened anyway, but I assume change was accelerated due to increased accountability requirements. The airlines, airports and other service companies involved are under pressure to know exactly what bags are where at any given time. A suspect package can gnarl up the system enough, but no one wants it to be on their watch that there is a call to find a suspect passengers bags and that is impossible due to a mistake. I'm surprised you noticed a change since 2010, given the sudden bump in security requirements from late 2001 I'd have expected a noticeable change closer to that time.

[†] less things falling off conveyors, getting their labels ripped off on the way through, better recording and identifying of bags via QR codes so if something does go the wrong way it can be easily identified and re-re-routed, etc.

habosa• 7 years ago

I still lose bags a very high percentage of the times that I check them (maybe 20%) so I never check them.

It's far from solved.

mantap• 7 years ago

I'm curious what routes you are flying and what airlines?

ghaff• 7 years ago

Lose or delayed?

I find delayed is probably 10% or more, especially with connecting flights and when weather causes changes. Though I rarely check luggage at all.

But I have never permanently lost a bag.

VitoVan• 7 years ago

I spend 3 minutes to find out this has nothing to do with German language.

allendoerfer• 7 years ago

Deutsche Bahn, while having undergone preparations for going public like Deutsche Post (DHL), Postbank and Deutsche Telekom, is still 100% state-owned. The current political sentiment in Germany makes an IPO very unlikely to happen in the forseeable future, so those operations might just continue. Just recently a few laws passed, further integrating state and DB (soldiers travelling for free, state money as part of climate change prevention, VAT decrease, etc).

Edit: Writing this on a DB train and just got a christmas present. :)

bloak• 7 years ago

The article fails to answer some obvious, albeit perhaps tediously technical questions: How much do they charge people to get their property back? Do they bother in cases in which it's unlikely the owner will be willing to pay that amount? In what proportion of cases do they find the owner, but the owner is unwilling to pay? Can the owner still claim the auction proceeds if they refused to pay to get the item back? (In which case, refusing to answer the question might be the optimal response!) How do they handle cash? (It would be eccentric to send by post or auction bank notes, even if they're foreign bank notes.)

rydl• 7 years ago

Between 5 and 50 € depending on whether you'll pick it up yourself or let them send it to you.

Also things that are apparently worth less than 15 € aren't shipped to the central lost&found.

Source only in german: https://www.bahn.de/p/view/service/fundservice.shtml

jiofih3• 7 years ago

Can we please, for the love of god, forbid posting non-public links to HN??

What’s the logic of linking to a page we cannot read?

mtmail2• 7 years ago

See "Are paywalls ok?" on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html You might disagree, but comments on paywall don't add anything to the discussion of the story.

jiofih3• 7 years ago

How should I advocate for a change of policy then? I’ve been complaining about this for a long time, it seriously detracts from the experience of using this as a news source.

rmetzler• 7 years ago

As a German: why does the clickbait title say this is secret?

Is this different from how other countries handle lost+found?

PuffinBlue• 7 years ago

Don't focus on the literal meaning of the word 'secret' too much. Secret can be used colloquially to mean 'unseen' or less commonly 'that which is not widely known but not technically secret'.

It's a dramatic way of saying such a thing, but that's to be expected in a newspaper headline.

selimthegrim2• 7 years ago

“Secret life of x” is a cliché in book titles/headlines in colloquial/idiomatic English

selimthegrim2• 7 years ago

Someone needs to write a sequel to The Third Policeman but with bikes instead of luggage

bookofjoe• 7 years ago

U.S. Unclaimed Baggage Center website: https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/

A Place Where Lost Luggage Gets Another Shot (2014)

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/business/a-place-where-lo...

This Is a Story About Loss: On losing things, losing people, and finding God at Unclaimed Baggage Center (2015)

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/20/9487775/unclaimed-baggage-cen...

The Secret Treasures of Lost Luggage Land (2016)

https://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2016-05-23/the-secret-tre...

This store in Alabama is selling your lost luggage (2019)

https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/watch-this-store-i...

mtmail2• 7 years ago

In the 90s in Germany there was a TV-show with luggage auction. The contestants had to bid, open them, then dress up. Audience voted for the best cat walk.

joyjoyjoy• 7 years ago

I would appreciate an article about "The secret afterlife of Belgium Mail"

The Belgium postal system ranks below Moldavia. It is a third world country and the postal system is dysfunctional.

Now wonder Boris Johnson is leaving after he lived some years in Bruessels.

The secret afterlife of lost German luggage

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