So the worst has happened and you’ve lost a wallet at a music festival… so now what?
Good question and here is a complicated answer!
It depends. Now that we’ve gotten through the complicated bits let us actually dive into an action plan.
Start by looking
A more traditional approach and can be highly effective. Search the area where you may of lost the wallet at the music festival. Ask friends and strangers in the area, check vendors that your visited, search your bags & pockets, and finally if no luck definitely head over to the Lost & Found. Very low likelihood that it arrives immediately (if it is going to arrive) but if there is a good system in place they should be able to take your info and let you know if the item arrives.
Risk Prevention
Well shit it’s not there so now what…
Very one dimensional questions coming from the crowd here… but you should try to hedge the loss a bit. Wouldn’t want identity theft or credit card fraud, especially debit card fraud, to ruin your weekend.
The most immediate risk are your debit and credit cards along with any friends, parents, or other relatives cards that you may of been carrying. A card freeze will be your best friend in this situation as the item may still show up and you might need it. Especially, with debit cards you want to be proactive about freezing or cancelling these as you have the least amount of protection.
Longer term you’re going to be a bit worried about possible identity theft or trying to get on a plane without an ID, which we can cover in a bit.
Paying for things
You may have noticed now that your wallet is missing you will have a bit more difficulty paying for things. Wallets are important and in this area especially so.
Your mobile device (phone) may be your saving grace here. You can borrow money from friends and Venmo them back or if you are at an awesome digital first festival, like the Firefly Festival going cashless, then the vendors are set up to use neat digital wallets like Apple & Google Pay.
Of course you would of needed to set it up before all your cards went missing so if not you might need to call Mom and get her card info.
Finding it
Pretty self explanatory and not much more to say here other than inventory the contents to make sure everything you lost is back in place, take out all of the unnecessary stuff that might really hurt had it not been found (social security card…), and put your items in a safe place so you don’t have this unfortunate issue again.
Otherwise, if it doesn’t show up onsite make sure you gave your info to Lost & Found in case it shows up later but this is your life now. Well, until you take weeks (yes on average weeks) to replace everything that went missing.
Producer’s Loss
Don’t want to lose out on a word of warning to the festival producers. This rather difficult wallet lost time for your attendees not only isn’t very fun but also makes you significantly less money.
Time spent without a wallet = not spending money
Time spent looking for the wallet = not spending money (or time with sponsors)
Time spent not having fun = higher chance they aren’t coming back next year
Solving this problem quickly, soothing fear & worries, and getting your fanbase back to engaging with the festival is the best possible situation for everyone. Our entirely biased but well thought out suggestion would be using software and services from Liff Happens (with new text alerts to notify attendees of found items!) to solve this very costly problem.
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