Brits lose £2bn of items a year with most losses at 6pm on Saturdays in December

Figures released highlight the need for Brits to protect their belongings as we reach the most dangerous time of year for losing things. According to the research – commissioned by www.mozy.co.uk, the world’s most trusted provider of online back up and data access solutions – more items are lost at 18:00 on Saturdays in December than at any other time of the year.

The transition from work to weekend, and Saturday-afternoon Christmas shopping to Saturday-night Christmas celebrations, appears to create the perfect conditions for loss with nearly as many items going missing on Fridays and Saturdays as the rest of the week put together.

And people travelling through Aberdeen, Birmingham and London should be extra cautious since these three cities form the Bermuda Triangle for lost property with more items reported lost or stolen there than any other cities in the UK.

A whopping 30 per cent of Brits lose two or more belongings a year and, globally, less than half of lost items are ever recovered. With the average Brit mislaying more than £80 worth of possessions in the past 12 months, this amounts to well over £2billion of lost property in the UK this year.

The most commonly-lost item is the smartphone which accounts for 35% of all item lost by men and 25% by women globally. In line with this trend, 70% of people have lost electronic gadgets, such as smartphones, laptops and MP3 players, which is all the more upsetting because losing these items not only means losing an expensive device but also the data that is held on it.

Claire Galbois-Alcaix from Mozy commented: “’Getting carried away’ and ‘carrying too much’ were two of the top reasons for losing things and dashing home from work to get to a seasonal party or bustling back after a day of Christmas shopping are great examples of these. Going straight from work to a party, laptop bag in hand, or snapping the festive fun with the camera on your smartphone puts more than just the devices themselves at risk though. As the research shows, it’s the vital work on the laptop or the irreplaceable pictures on your phone that people really hate to lose. That’s why we’re urging everyone to backup the content on their devices before they get to the most dangerous time of the year. It’s simple to do and you can even do it for free.”

Reinforcing how important backup is, 57 per cent of respondents said they would be more upset about losing the data on a device than the device itself. So valuable, in fact, is the information on smartphones that, rather than just getting a replacement device, 97 per cent of people who had dropped their phone down a toilet said that they had tried to retrieve it.

Some of the most common things that people reported finding were money (in some cases as much as £3000), bags, pets and jewellery – though more than 15 sets of false teeth were reported found by the research respondents. More unusually, mummified dogs, a C17th cannon ball and a winning scratch card were all uncovered.

The best hope for recovering lost items is for someone else to return them, the research found. 52 per cent of items that found their way home came at the hands of a conscientious stranger, compared to just 11.5 per cent of items that were rediscovered by their owners. Beware though, whilst 61 per cent of people have found an item that wasn’t theirs and 52 per cent successfully returned them, 16 per cent kept the item for themselves and six per cent sold it.

When it comes to looking for lost items, almost 90% of Brits give up looking for an item after a week – only the USA look for less time (92%). The Germans are the most persistent with over a quarter of respondents continuing their search for a month or more. Interestingly, the Germans are also the country least likely to lose belongings with 64% of respondents claiming not to have lost anything (compared to a global average of 51%) in the last 12 months, and the highest proportion of people who had lost items saying they had only lost one item (14%). Going against the lucky stereotype, the Irish are the most likely to lose items (36%).

Regional differences also appeared in the type of items that are lost and how they are lost too. Fashion-conscious French are twice as likely to lose a favourite item of clothing than the Brits and four times as likely as Germans. Americans are twice as likely to lose laptops as Germans and four times as likely to lose their keys. Germans however are two-and-a-half times as likely to lose their purse or wallet as Brits or the French. Americans are four times as likely as Germans to lose an item because they ‘got carried away’.

Top ten things that go missing (global):

1) Smartphone

2) Jewellery

3) Sunglasses

4) Keys

5) Bank/credit card

6) Clothing

7) Umbrella

8) Purse/wallet

9) ID

10) Paperwork

The five things people are most upset to lose:

1) Bank card

2) Laptop

3) Smartphone

4) ID

5) Wallet/purse

Looney Losses – some of the most unusual things people reported finding:

– 1947 Florin

– £3000 in £10 notes

– A chicken

– A handcuff key

– A hogs pudding

– A black pearl in a shell

– A small antique clock

– £100,000 in vouchers

– A bag of worms

– A bowler hat

– C17th cannonball

– False teeth

– Mummified dog

– Rolex

– Unexploded bomb

– A safe

– A full bank deposit bag

– A samurai sword

– A .45 calibre handgun

– A draft screen play

– A parakeet

– A little black book

– An antler

– A cucumber in an umbrella stand

– One Prada shoe

– Two guinea pigs

– A rowing machine

– A cash register

– A winning scratch card

– A gold tooth