Bounce

I was vacationing with the kids in San Francisco and it turned out for transit reasons to improve our day a lot to be able to store our suitcases somewhere in the city for the whole day. There is, as they say, an app for that, called Bounce. It’s a pretty clever idea! You pay $7.50 a bag and Bounce connects you with a location that’s willing to store luggage for you — in our case, a hotel (a budget option which is apparently famous for having the toilet just being out there openly in the room, to save space) but they use UPS locations and other stores too. A luggage locker at the train station would be cheaper, but of course that would mean you have to go to the train station, which might be out of your way.

Now the question is this — could I have saved some money and just shown up at a random hotel, handed the bellhop a twenty, and asked him to keep four bags in the back room for the day? Seems kind of reasonable. On the other hand, I can imagine hotels being under insurance instructions not to store bags for unknown non-guests. But why wouldn’t the same insurance caution keep them from signing up with Bounce? Maybe Bounce has taken on the liability somehow.

Anyway, this is not a service I anticipate needing often, but in a moment when it was exactly what I needed, it did exactly what I wanted, so I recommend it.

PS: My kids are now extremely into San Francisco.