Has it ever happened to you that you never received what you ordered? Every year, more than two tons of parcels disappear without ever reaching their intended destination. What happens to these lost packages? What happens to abandoned parcels? To prevent them from being destroyed, some people have sniffed out the opportunity and launched an ingenious business: the sale of lost parcels. The idea? Buy surprise parcels by weight, blind, without knowing what they contain. In Namur and Liège, the store dedicated to this type of purchase is called Pile ou Face . It’s aptly named, given that you never really know what you’re going to get…
Selling lost parcels by weight
Do you like surprises? Then this is the concept for you. It’s impossible to know what you’re going to find in a Pile ou Face parcel. With an address in Namur and another in Liège, Pile ou Face sells lost parcels by weight and blind – most of them from Amazon. Whether due to an error during delivery, a wrong address or an absent recipient, many parcels will never find their original addressee. One man’s misfortune is another man’s gain, and if you so wish, you could become their happy (new) owner.
So what do we find in these boxes? According to the owners, the lots range from electronics such as wireless headphones or smartwatches to sex toys, luxury clothes and unusual parcels such as dog toothbrushes. To date, the most expensive item sold is a Moncler jacket worth 1,500 euros. The jackpot! But since the concept relies solely on luck, customers generally come across products that are far less tempting… So we can measure his enthusiasm.
The reason this sale is so interesting (when you’re not buying dog toothbrushes) is that the price per kilo is just 16 euros. It’s a matter of luck, of course, but when you look at Amazon’s product catalog, you’ll want to believe it! What’s more, the practice benefits the environment by giving a second chance to products that would otherwise have been destroyed. Can you imagine?