« Books for October | Main | aren't emergency rooms fun? »
Thursday, November 02, 2006
things that make you say grr duh
Let's say you're walking along somewhere in a small town and you see a cell phone lying somewhere, all lonely and abandoned. And let's say it's on and the battery is charged and everything. Do you:
a) leave it there and keep walking, assuming someone will come back for it?
b) pick it up, find an address book entry marked, say, HOME, hit SEND, and say to the person who answers, "Hey, I think I found your cell phone."?
or
c) pick it up, take it with you, and use it freely until the owner realizes it's really and truly lost and notices that she has a whole lot of recent calls and text messages and who knows what all on her online statement that she didn't make, and she calls customer service to have it suspended?
I'm a letter B person myself. I'm nosy. Maybe you're more of a letter A person. But whoever the jerk was who found MY cell phone obviously went for letter C. With gusto.
Oh, well, good thing I was way overdue for my new-every-two free phone anyway. Except that now I have to start all over buying accessories and spare batteries and all that fun stuff. yay.
This also means that if I had your phone number(s) (Susan and Jenn, I am totally talking to you. Kristen, I think I still have an email with yours somewhere), I probably don't now, and you should email me with it(them). I don't even have my brother-in-law's phone number, or T's best friend's. I hope he wrote that one down somewhere, otherwise we'll just have to wait for him to call us because the guy doesn't even have e-mail and I became super lazy about writing important stuff down if I have an electronic device in which to save it instead (Please Lord don't let Microsoft Money crash and burn anytime soon).
******************updated to add***********************
I so totally hesitated to write this update, but in the spirit of full bloggerish disclosure and honesty among friends I feel that I must.
Guess what I found under the armrest in my car when we went to go to Awana tonight? (note: I had driven the car twice already today for short distances. I am SO SO OBSERVANT.)
Um, yeah.
What remains a mystery is the fact that when I logged into my account this morning online to check and see if anyone had been using my phone in the last couple of days, when I'd not seen or used it, the website said that someone had. There were more minutes than there had been, and it said that the last call made had been this morning at 8:30, when I hadn't had my hands on my phone since Monday afternoon. In fact I can be relatively certain that my phone battery was dead at 8:30 this morning, because the battery lasts a max of like a day and a half on standby. After I called and suspended the use of the phone, the minutes rolled back and the last-call date and time did too; I assumed this was the little telecom gnomes wiping my account clean of all those nasty evil stolen minutes.
You can hum the Twilight Zone theme now if you want. Or else the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum one. You choose.
At least the replacement phone didn't cost me anything. I guess now I have a spare, at any rate, and woo hoo, am I glad I didn't already dump all those chargers and accessories and stuff. Can you imagine if I'd had insurance on the silly thing and filed a claim? I'm SO GLAD I didn't pay the extra $6 a month for insurance, or else I would be in the seventh level of hellish embarrassment right now. Instead of only the third.
Comments
That is just plain awful!! Is there anyway to trace it to the dork who took it?
Posted by: debi at November 2, 2006 02:43 PM
So, someone took it, used it and then put it in your car? Do you text messages?
Posted by: jenn at November 2, 2006 10:21 PM
I think it's very suspicious indeed that there were calls on your cell which then were wiped off when you reported it stolen... could it be that your provider charges you for what they *think* you'll owe, rather than what's actually the case?
I'm really glad you found it though :-)
Posted by: Maria at November 2, 2006 11:05 PM
My theory is a very poorly-timed glitch in their online system. Or else elves. I'm really pretty sure that the phone was in the car all along. The funny thing is, I was about to put on shoes and check the car when I thought, hey, I bet I lost it on our walk on Monday; I'd better check the usage to make sure someone didn't pick it up and start using it. So I never did get out to the car to look. Of course, the next thing I did was load the kids into the car and drive to my mom's work (to borrow her van to go to the valley -- remember the Dart's brake cylinder is in the shop). And none of us saw my phone just sitting there under the edge of the center armrest. It didn't even occur to me to really look, because of course the dastardly finders-keepers-losers-weepers thief had my phone, right? I am so awesome.
Jenn, it doesn't actually show you text messages used in the little area where you can check your usage. I just assumed that with that many extra minutes, somebody would be making full use of their newfound free text messaging as well. I do not text-message; I'm not hip enough. Although T has a text pager and I frequently send him notes from the paging service's online -- um -- thing where you can send notes to text pagers. So much nicer than calling and having his boss answer the phone. :)
Posted by: Rachel at November 3, 2006 03:01 AM
The good thing is that it was found safe!
Posted by: debi at November 3, 2006 12:36 PM
