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⛑️Consumer Rescue presents🛟
Tales from Consumer Advocacy Land
Real stories. Real rescues. Real advice.
Hi friends! 🤓
I recently went down a rabbit hole I didn’t even know existed — one that starts with lost airline luggage and ends with me running three miles on my treadmill in sneakers that once belonged to a complete stranger.
If an airline permanently loses your bag and pays you for it, that’s usually the end of the story for you. But it turns out it’s not the end of the story for your stuff. Some of it eventually resurfaces in a very unexpected place: a resale shop in rural Alabama that buys unclaimed baggage from airlines.
Being me, I decided not just to research this — but to test it. I went shopping at Unclaimed Baggage to see what really happens to lost luggage, what airlines owe you when your bag disappears, and whether buying someone else’s “reclaimed” shoes is a brilliant deal… or a terrible idea.
Here’s what I learned — and how my experiment turned out.
I’m really sorry but I’m not feeling well tonight. I will add an extra newsletter this week on Friday, after I am feeling a bit better. Sorry!
This Week’s Fiascos and Fixes 🔍
✈️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.
😵At some point during her international flight from New York to Madrid, Alberta Chen lost her passport. As a result, she ended up at the immigration window in Spain with no passport to show the officers. What happened next was a traveler’s worst nightmare. Alberta was taken from the airport, placed in detention overnight, and then deported back to the United States the following day.
Now she wants to know how she can get a $2,400 refund for this vacation fiasco. (MCF)
⛴️Norwegian Cruise Line recently gave Evangelia Koumanidis some awful news about her family’s much-anticipated sailing aboard Prima, its brand-new ship. In a baffling email, NCL canceled their fully paid $4,657 cruise – citing nonpayment.
That’s when an NCL agent informed a stunned Koumanidis that there was no mistake. The cruise line had canceled the family’s trip 21 days before departure over a surprise $112 unpaid balance. (MCF)
💰Just before the holidays, Jill Eberhardt says scammers hit her PayPal account with an unauthorized $1,010 transaction. Although her bank, Chase, immediately identified the unusual "purchase" from Maple & Mist Café as fraudulent, PayPal disagreed. It determined she had authorized the transaction, and PayPal's opinion was the only one that mattered.
Eberhardt's money was gone…
Michelle Couch-Friedman, Chief Fiasco Fixer
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Your friend and loyal consumer advocate,
Michelle Couch-Friedman
Founder/CFF (Chief Fiasco Fixer) 😛
917-841-0583
The Consumer Rescue newsletter and the articles you read on the site are fine-tuned by a team of absolutely wonderful editors (and my friends): Art Ellis, Karen Roberts, Irene Rawlings, Wendie Feinberg, Tanya Anticevic, Jennifer Finger, Robyn Whittingham, Teri Bergin, Dwayne Coward, and Chip Elam. ❤️ |