Less than 24 hours into Independent.com’s experiment with SendMeHome.com, an item has already been lost, found, and recovered. (Read about the experiment here.

The intentionally misplaced item was an iPod Shuffle, worth somewhere around $50, and our secret agent dropped it near a bench by the Music Department at UCSB. Less than a couple hours after it “went missing” — and before we in the office even knew the drop had occurred — I received an email that said the following:

Your iPod shuffle with tag PJ1-7 has been found.

The finder of the item has sent you a message detailing how to retrieve the item. To read the message, log into your SendMeHome.com account and click on the "Messages" tab, or follow the link below …

Sincerely -

The SendMeHome.com Team

So I logged onto my account and read the following message:

sittin on the bench, it is in the music office

And replied accordingly, saying that it would be picked up momentarily. Easy as that.

When spreading the news around my nay-saying officemates that an item had successfully been lost, found, and recovered, initial happy surprise quickly morphed back into pessimism.

“That’s because nobody wants an iPod Shuffle!” said one.

“Those things suck,” echoed another.

It seems that the SendMeHome.com team still has some work to do in winning the minds of The Independent’s staffers. But it’s clear that their service does work, at least for iPod Shuffles.

To date, five of the 10 items have been lost, one has been recovered. The remaining five will be lost sometime later today. Stay tuned for more, and be on the lookout for lost items with a little SendMeHome.com sticker. If you turn it in, you’ll get a free pack of labels to start registering your own valuables.

Related Links

• Our SendMeHome.com Social Experiment

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