Storage cannot be disposed of: how Moscow lost and found bureaus work
Every year, passengers forget tens of thousands of things in transport, but not all of them try to recover the loss. And in vain: the lost can be found through the lost and found services. However, its storage and return can cost thousands of rubles. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
Thousands of casualties underground
Arina K., a student at MIPT, realized that her bag with her student ID and personal belongings was left in the subway car when she got off at the Lenin Library station, the doors closed and the train started moving. When the shock was over, Arina went to the metro's website, filled out the required form, described the situation, and sent an email to the address listed on the website. A few days later, she received a reply in which she was asked to come to the warehouse of forgotten things at the Business Center station for missing items. The girl did it, but she never received the bag that day.: Now she has left her identity papers at home. "Things are returned only upon presentation of a passport, and in no other way," the employee explains.
It is stuffy and hot in the small, no more than 10 square meters. m. waiting room of the warehouse. There is a counter, two computers, a departmental calendar on the wall, and in the middle, next to the slightly open door, behind which the shelves of the warehouse are visible, there are a dozen black bags piled up, from which all sorts of things can be seen: mittens, bag handles and hats. These are items that have not yet been sorted in the metro and at the MCC, which were brought to the warehouse today by couriers from the sorting center. This mountain is not the only one of its kind: the same warehouses are located at Cherkizovskaya and Kotelniki metro stations. After a couple of hours, all the items will be sorted and entered into a computer program that virtually connects the warehouses to each other. This allows you to quickly locate a specific lost item. Here's a girl who accidentally walks in and asks to find out where the vintage suitcase she lost in the subway is stored. Half a minute later, the employee enters the name of the item into a special computer program and declares that there is no such thing in any of the warehouses. Either it has not been received here or the information about it has not yet been processed.
Things get to the warehouse only after drawing up the act and concluding the cynological service, usually the journey takes five days. Last year alone, according to official statistics from FSUE Moscow Metro, 48,000 passengers forgot their belongings in wagons and at stations. Most often, things were forgotten on the Bolshaya Koltsevaya, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya and Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya lines. People lost items specific to a particular season: mittens, gloves, hats and scarves in winter, panama hats, caps in summer.
However, among the finds were a radio-controlled yacht model, a psaltery, an accordion, and even a meter-long toy octopus. Anyone can return what they have lost, but a certain order must be observed.
"If a passenger has forgotten their belongings on the subway, it is necessary to call the Moscow Transport contact center at 3210 from a mobile phone or leave a request through the Moscow Metro application. It is required to describe all the details of the trip. Tell as much information as possible about the forgotten items, including their type, time and date of the trip, as well as the metro line where the passenger traveled. If the lost item matches the description of the one that arrived at the warehouse, the passenger will need to come with the necessary documents to identify and pick it up," Svetlana Batova, head of the customer service center of the payment services service, explained through the press service of the Moscow Metro.
Keep it for free
There are warehouses of forgotten items not only in the subway, but also at airports and on the railway. For example, Aeroflot has storage chambers for unclaimed baggage, they are based at Sheremetyevo Airport in the area of domestic and international lines. Usually, passengers' belongings found on board arriving Aeroflot and Rossiya Airlines planes (part of the Aeroflot Group) are brought there. 20 employees work with forgotten items. Flight attendants, airport security personnel, or cleaning company staff transfer things to the luggage room. The fact of putting the item in the warehouse must be documented.
Over the past two years, passengers on Aeroflot flights have forgotten things more often, and consequently, lost items have been returned to their owners more often. If in 2023, more than 13.8 thousand items forgotten by passengers on board airplanes arrived at the Aeroflot storage room, and almost 5 thousand items were returned at the request of the owners, then in 2024 the number of items received amounted to more than 18.3 thousand, of which 6 thousand were returned to passengers. In addition to traditional hats, scarves, or notebooks, passengers forgot dentures, mismatched shoes, baby pots, hearing aids, and individual toilet seats.
"The owner can receive the item after presenting a boarding pass, passport and description of the item. Storage of things in a special Aeroflot camera at Sheremetyevo airport is free of charge for passengers. Items are stored within the time limits prescribed by law, that is, within six months from the moment of their discovery. Then the unclaimed items are destroyed," says Ilya Voronov, Director of Aeroflot's Ground Transportation Department.
Other airlines do not have their own warehouses at airports, but they pick up forgotten items in the cabins and transfer them to their representative offices at airports. To receive the lost item, the passenger must first report the loss through the airline's corporate website, describing the loss in as much detail as possible.
Money grows by kilometers
Not all transportation facilities can keep things for free. For example, Aeroflot and the Metro will not charge money for passenger storage, but Sheremetyevo Airport's lost and found office will only be able to receive your item for free for the first two days, then they will be stored for money in accordance with the tariff. Blaming employees for charging fees is difficult. This work is endless and requires them to be attentive, stress-resistant and prompt.
Previously, the 1985 RBP-85 baggage guide was in effect, which prescribed storing items for only two months. However, it was canceled, and now the lost and found bureau of Sheremetyevo Airport stores things for six months, as required by the Civil Code. This is a long time, according to airport staff. About 120 different items are brought to the Sheremetyevo lost and found office per day, that is, during the year, employees of this structure register about 43 thousand finds. According to the law, it is impossible to throw them away, even if the thing is broken. Other airports also store things for a long time. For example, the Lost & Found service at Domodedovo Airport took 42,000 forgotten items into storage last year.
At Sheremetyevo Airport, things are stored in a warehouse with a total area of 64.9 square meters. m, these are three rooms with high ceilings on the ground floor of Terminal B. In one room there is an employee with a computer and several safes for the most valuable finds — documents, gadgets or valuables. Dozens of wheelchairs and baby strollers are stored in a larger room, and next to it there is a warehouse of other things, of which there are thousands. Everything lost in the hustle and bustle of the airport is neatly organized here and lies on five shelves located around the perimeter. Lost gym hoops hang from the ceiling, crutches stick out from the top shelf, and next to them a dozen hats cascade, suitcases, empty and with things, 50 different powerbanks have accumulated under the table in separate sections, a dozen laptops are in a large transparent container on the bottom shelf.
All the shelves are numbered, each item has its own individual registration number, a special label is written out and hung, and this storage location is indicated in the special sample accounting log, so it's a matter of minutes to find the item at the passenger's request. At the time of the issue, the person signs in the journal, and the employee enters a description into a computer program called "Warehouse".
The passenger fills out an electronic application form on the airport's website and describes the item in detail. When Sheremetyevo employees see this request, they find the item according to the description and answer how much it will cost to store it and deliver it to another city if the passenger cannot come for it himself. Sometimes passengers decide not to pick up an item, sometimes they come for it after a few months and then they can no longer get their item for free.
"A citizen will pay an outsourcing company for the storage of a lost item. For the first two days, the item will be stored for free, but the registration costs 200 rubles, the third day — 270 rubles, and all subsequent days — 125 rubles. In general, time is money. Sometimes laptop owners pay 10-15 thousand each for storing and shipping their valuables," says Natalia Borisova, Chief Specialist of the Lost and Found Bureau of the Sheremetyevo International Airport Airport Services Service.
The item can be delivered to the home address by Russian Post, with which the airport has a special agreement. The geography of shipments, according to the Lost and Found bureau staff, is wide. Most of the lost items go to Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Yugra, St. Petersburg, less often to Anapa and Sochi. The most exotic finds that came to the bureau during its entire existence are an urn with the ashes of a cat and a human skull, which the family was taking to burial. "They were also sent by mail, and people received them," Natalia Borisova sums up.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
