Lost Property

[SeaTheStars]

What happens to lost property in shops?

 

[CreaseProof]

Do you know what happens with lost property in these places at the moment? Maybe call a few places and ask.

Never heard of that idea before though - so it's good thinking.

 

[matt seymour]

An interesting idea that I've certainly not come across before, but it does have a couple of potential flaws.

1, The success or failure of this as a service relies almost entirely on the honesty of your fellow human being. First of all, if it's a member of the public at said venue that finds the item, you're assuming they will be honest enough to hand in the item they find. Even if that member of the public does hand in that item, you are then depending on the member of staff to be equally as honest.

2, Surely, if someone goes to a day at the races and then gets home only to discover that they have lost something, their first thought will be to phone the racecourse directly. In short, are the public that daft that they would need a middle man such as you are suggesting?

3, As you say, there isn't much in it for the companies.

 

[matt seymour]

Damn!

Since posting my lengthy reply, the OP has edited his or her post and completely removed their business idea, so my response now looks a bit daft!

Thanks for that.

 

[SeaTheStars]

Damn!

Since posting my lengthy reply, the OP has edited his or her post and completely removed their business idea, so my response now looks a bit daft!

Thanks for that.

Sorry Matt, I thought you said I should ask what happens to Lost Property that's why I edited the post.

Original post.

Once again, apologies guys.

This was another idea I had going on at the minute,

I was thinking about starting up a Lost Property website where I would incure most of my income by getting retail stores and other grounds of entertainment such as racecourses, football grounds, amusements etc to sign up to a montly plan where they are encourages to use their account and list the item up on the website.

Where they would get their returns I am not sure, possibly donations? but I wanted to encorporate that any items unclaimed apart from personal items such as wallets etc would be listed for auction on the website and the money would be shared between them and the lost property company.

We're talking about small margins and why would a business sign up to a monthly fee if they are not getting anything out of it? maybe they would like to be known as more customer friendly, imagine at the end of year annual reports "we solved 13,250 cases of lost items in our stores ensuring our customers come first"

Imagine across the UK 250,000 stores paying £1.99 a month

 

[matt seymour]

In answer to the new shortened question of what happens to lost property in shops, I imagine some of it gets picked up and nicked by members of the public and some of it ends up in a lost property box for a period of time before it is claimed by its owner, taken home by a member of staff or thrown in the bin.

I suppose the policy will vary from company to company and the value and nature of the item will also play a part.

 

[rockone]

Depends how renowned and genuine is the company. If the company is good then the lost property will be in the lost box for very long duration for the owner of it to claim.

 

[WorldofBooks]

I'm not sure the level of lost property is enough to sustain the market.

Market research needed.

 

[SeaTheStars]

How about this then.

What if I was to create a small peelable seethrough piece of laminate that contains numbers in some form of ink, the customer puts the laminate on their item and peels it across so that their number is on the item, this number is invisble to the naked eye and would only show through ultra violet light or possibly a scanner.

The customer registers with our website where the are designated their own personal number and can purchase security tags.

I think I need to work on trying to explain my thoughts, it would be something the size of a 50p peice that can print an invisible number onto items any colour, any size etc.

 

[Mason567]

Some companies have set time lengths and if they arnt recovered given to charity shops.
However we have items at work in the safe e.g. mobiles and wallets that have literally been in there years !!

 

[emmylou74]

I have worked in a lot of shops and with lost property, the item would normally be kept for about a week at customer services - then sent to the police.

Theres been a couple of times when I worked that I found purses - I handed them to customer services and then about 6 months later I got a letter from the police saying nobody had claimed the item and they were signing it over to me. I got about £40 and a lottery ticket lol - the lottery ticket was not a winner lol.