Flatmate says I owe her £600

[Digestivesandcheese]

I was meeting my flatmate (who is also a good friend) in London recently and agreed to bring her weekend bag with me on the train (She was meeting her DM earlier in the day for a trip to the Theatre) I had a rucksack containing my things for the weekend.
I got off the train in London and realised I had stupidly left her bag on the train. I got back on the train but the bag was gone! It hasn't turned up in lost property. I have chased up several times.
My friend says I owe her £600 for the bag and contents. I agree it was my fault but can I claim compensation from the rail company as the bag hasn't turned up? If not, I will have to borrow money to pay my friend for her things

The scenarios I posted are relevant because we are debating whether or not someone who carries a bag is responsible for it being stolen. Altering the circumstances slightly give a different perspective. The bag was stolen, not lost. Who is responsible?

It sounds to me as if the bag was stolen. It’s very annoying for both of you, but I think your friend should be a bit more sympathetic as you were trying to help her, and that was a lot of responsibility she put on your shoulders. Did she tell you that there were very expensive items in the bag? Did she ask you to take the bag, or did you offer? I think offering to pay half so £300 would be a generous thing to do, and if you were my friend I would think that would show that you were trying to fix things, and valued our friendship. That should be enough.

Even if she does have insurance it is unlikely they will pay because they would look at it that SHE shouldn't have left the bag in someone else's care. That is also the way I would look at it. The bag was her responsibility so she should either have taken it herself or accept that she is at least partially responsible for it being lost. She is just exploiting the fact that she's dealing with a person, not a hard faced insurance company. £600 may not be a lot to cover a weekend bag for some people but in the current climate £600 IS a lot of money if you don't have it. I note the OPs bag contents didn't amount to anywhere near that so she probably really can't afford it. I think the friend would be lucky to be getting £300 and should learn to take responsibility for her own things in future.

Was it you? Are you Joanna the daft twat from Kent? She could have answered the phone that was ringing in it 16 times or checked the notebook with all my details in, like she did eventually. She definitely could have handed it in to the nearest shop. She was after a reward and was a rough daft twat.

So does mine.

No, they aren't at all relevant as none of them are the same as the OP's one at all. The OP was careless and left it on the train.

Maybe the friend shouldn’t have packed such expensive things when not taking responsibility for her things herself. Of course OP should have said this before accepting to take this responsibility also.

What made you think you could claim from the train company? You realise anyone in financial difficulties would just start leaving bags on trains, produce a bunch of recipes for clothes and claim they were in the bag to get a payout, don’t you? So no, of course the train company won’t pay you for the bag you left sitting there and someone took the opportunity to steal it.

You remember to lift your own bag. It was just your friend’s that wasn’t important and sorry, but she is absolutely allowed to buy good quality clothes and make up so you don’t get to complain about the cost. You agreed to bring the stuff so you took responsibility for it. Lesson learned to be more careful with people’s belongings, especially as you didn’t forget your own bag.

I feel for you because you were doing her a favour bringing her bag. It was something she asked you to do. It’s not like you took it upon yourself to just take her bag out and then lost it.

If I was your friend, I actually don’t think I’d feel comfortable asking for any money. Maybe I’m a pushover!

Just in case - if you happen to have an annual travel insurance policy (or your bank account includes it for example), then if you had booked accommodation in London you may be covered by that (for some it has to be 2 nights I think though)? There would be an excess no doubt and there may be exclusions for leaving things behind, but it's worth checking if you do.

I would not ask a friend to replace a bag that I'd asked her to carry for me. I would not be happy to carry a bag/contents worth £600 for someone else.

Accidents happen (or theft, whatever). The point is you did not legally undertake responsibility for delivering her bag to her, in the same way that say DHL would. You were just doing her a favour. Despite your best efforts, it went wrong. It's just as much her fault for entrusting you with that responsibility as it is yours. Honestly I think she should suck it up, or if you were feeling generous you could make a contribution, but no way the whole value. You didn't provide her with a written legally enforceable guarantee that you would provide a service to her with an agreed fee.

I’m not sure why you would think you could claim from the Rail company…?

you definitely cannot claim on your home insurance policy? Usually they cover for items away from Home.

Yes you owe her,you accidentally lost the bag. One of you submit insurance claim for contents
regards the £600 value that’s easily accrued in items tbh

Yes, for the sake of the friendship, it would be nice to meet in the middle over this.

Obviously, you feel rotten about forgetting her bag, but it was a genuine mistake. Could have happened to anyone. Also, as your friend, she should be understanding that you feel bad and not hold it against you. I expect she'd like to be forgiven for her mistakes too.

Paying half would be a nice gesture and hopefully you can both move on.

Might be worth checking out an insurance claim too, if you have it.

Who in their right mind spends £600 on a bag and overnight stuff unless they are very wealthy.

My whole wardrobe is probably only worth that.

Most people's overnight bag and stuff would be worth around £200 and that is all the OP should have to pay.

She was doing her a favour and made a mistake.

In the vague hope it would turn up I would contact each station stop to check their lost properties incase someone turned it in. Did the friend leave contact details with it?

It is tricky, I would pay in your position however I wouldn’t ask in their position

Also there are people, often at London terminals, who board trains and see what they can nick, and then get off again before the train departs.

Lots of people in this thread have broken down how an overnight bag and contents could easily cost over £600 without anything even being high end. No one is suggesting the friend went out and spent £600 on items specifically for this weekend away - but items she has that she has bought over time (shoes, clothes, make up, perfume, chargers etc) will easily add up to that amount (and if she had high end tastes, I’m guessing she has already discounted the actual cost of replacement significantly).

Some of the comments on this thread are wild.

Right!? I cannot believe the people on here sometimes. For all we know, 600.00 could be the value of the things used, not new. Hair straighters, makeup, toiletries, clothes shoes, bra. If even one or two of those things are designer it could easily run to over 600.00. Not everyone does their shopping in Primark.

You don’t get to decide what you do or do not have to repay, just because you don’t think someone should have expensive clothes. A weekend bag and contents does not have a price limit. Yours might only be worth a couple hundred pounds, but mine would hit close to £1000. I’m not doing anything wrong in having nice things. If you take my nice things and then lose them, then you’ll have to pay for it.

WaltzingWaters I understand that we all have different ideas of what constitutes “expensive”. To me those things are mid price and I wouldn’t consider them especially expensive. Actually my make up and cosmetics costs far in excess of the random cost I quoted. I was trying to explain that while on the face of it £600 may sound expensive, mid price items can easily rack up to that and more. You may consider £600 to be expensive taste but that isn’t here or there really because that is just your personal opinion of what counts as expensive. Likely the friend whose bag has been lost won’t consider those items to be of such high value that she wouldn’t dare submit to a friend carrying them for her for a short time. If the friend doesn’t consider them expensive then she is unlikely to even have thought for one minute of not being able to entrust them to her friend who, one assumes, she considered a trustworthy companion. Whether YOU think they’re expensive isn’t the point. And my post was aimed at those people who seemed to saying she must be loaded and can afford to lose the cost of the items or should go halves. No. This isn’t a bag of diamonds which she had placed in someone’s care without their knowledge. It’s a fairly standard bag of weekend stuff. For some people this is expensive. For others it’s not at all. Irrelevant. It’s her stuff and her friend agreed to carry it and then left it on a train (remembering to pick up her own bag). It’s a bummer. But it’s still on her to replace what she lost regardless of people’s opinions on the cost.

If you have a bag with contents worth £1K, would you ask someone else to carry it for you? I would want to make sure I had it with me at all times.

And if you are asking someone else to carry it for you and effectively to insure the contents for you in case it got lost, do you think you should tell them? If it were me being asked to take that sort of responsibility, I would certainly expect to be given the choice - and I would probably suggest to the case owner that they made other arrangements.

Used make-up and toiletries are effectively valueless. Who is going to buy a used lipstick or half a bottle of moisturiser?

If you want to pack designer clothes and shoes, then you should take responsibility for your own things, not push it on to other people.

£600 for a bag of belongings does not suggest she is ‘very wealthy’. For context, my carry-all bag is worth double that alone. My belongings are insured, but yes, I would trust a friend to grab that for me if I needed it. Because I trust my friends to not be careless.

It really doesn’t matter what the bag of anyone else is worth because she didn’t lose the bag of anyone else. She lost her friend’s bag, and that is worth £600.

OP knows her friend’s belongings are more expensive than hers, and she chose to assume responsibility for it. That’s on her.