This isn’t the post I expected to write about Lost Stock. When I came across the website in May, I thought it was a great idea – various clothing companies had refused to pay for the items and work already done in places like Bangladesh so a company in Scotland came in and organised a way for those pieces to be sent out direct to consumers and more money could go to the workers. I signed up to get a box, tweeted about it (because I knew it was something people who follow me would be interested in) and forgot about it because it was going to take 6-8 weeks, and I thought it would be a fun surprise. My order number was in the 6300’s, so I thought that would be one of the first batches to be sent out.
A week or two after that, Alex and I started talking about what to do about housing as our lease was ending at the end of July – we could renew or we could start thinking about buying a house. Long story short (there should be a blog post about this eventually but you already know this bit if you follow me on Instagram) we bought a house and moved in early August. I refused to let myself believe it was happening until we were actually in the office signing the papers because we had a few dramas along the way with valuations.
First week of July, Lost Stock sent an email out to ask people to confirm their address. At this point, we weren’t sure what was going to happen, but since we had extended our lease until the end of August, I didn’t bother to change my address because why would a company be asking about confirming address details if they weren’t going to ship it soon?
Third week of July (21st July), I got an email saying that my order was coming and I should get tracking information that week. Hooray! (I just checked my emails, and I actually got tracking information on 11th Sept which…is not that week. Even checking the tracking information, the first date the parcel entered the tracking system was 17th August at Shenzhen airport)
We completed on the house on 7th Aug, and moved in the next day. I sent a message asking to change my address and while Lost Stock were unable to update the address, they confirmed that the parcel would be sent via USPS who had been informed of the change of address so in theory should redirect the parcel.
Unfortunately, USPS ignored the redirection to my new house and instead has delivered the parcel to somewhere in California (which I can only assume is the Lost Stock US returns address – however Lost Stock are denying all knowledge of this address… but it must have come from somewhere on the actual parcel!)
What prompted me to write this post now was that I was on Fohr looking at the latest potential collaborations and found that Lost Stock were looking for influencers to work with. It’s been frustrating enough to get emails from them bragging how they’ve sent out tens of thousands of parcels (assuming that their order numbers began from 1, then wouldn’t I have already had my parcel being in the first ten thousand?) but when I saw they were looking to send influencers a free box for coverage, I got annoyed. Perhaps you should figure out how to actually get paying consumers their items before you advertise for more customers? (As of writing this on 26/9, this opportunity is still open on the Fohr site)
If I ever get my Lost Stock box (which to be fair, I don’t expect to, and tbh don’t want), then I’ll do a blog post about what I receive but at this rate, I’m going to get a box of summer clothes in November which isn’t exactly useful when you live in the Pacific Northwest!
edit – 12th October: I received a refund! It took a long time, and I had already requested a chargeback from Apple Card three weeks ago, but at least I am no better or worse off that before!
If you’ve ended up on this post because you’re thinking about ordering from Lost Stock because you like what they’re doing, make sure you read this article from the Guardian about seven ways to help garment workers and consider donating directly to charities such as Labour Behind The Label, Clean Clothes Campaign and the Garment Worker Center.