Id like to share a similar story a just encountered with my 5s that just happened recently.
So recently i purchased my 5s as soon as i could from apple, had it pre-ordered, i got the "gold" or more of a champagne color, anyway so i was all antsy and waiting for it to come the day of delivery, i sat and watched for the ups guy all day, and kept checking the tracking number, and it just said out for delivery, so i assumed that ups would be extremely busy so i figured id get it tomorrow, the next day...same thing, so the morning of the third day, i noticed that it said delivered, i started to panic a bit, since i just dropped all that money on it, i called UPS and freaked out, all they told me was theyll check on it and call me back, i never received any calls and i called them multiple times.
The same day i contacted apple and they overnighted me another one and this time i asked them if they can either not put a return postage on it or mask the senders name, and they sent it in a regular cardboard box with a ups sticker on it that said on the senders part "Sender Hidden upon Reciepients request" and i received it.
Well a couple days later i was also curious so called apple and asked them what the deal was, they told me to call the police and reference a case number they gave me. My cousin is a police officer with the local force so i asked him if he could look into it, we used findmyiphone and hey whaddya know?! we found it! someone had activated it, so he went to address alone first and spoke with a young man, he described the kid as a "Good Kid" he said that he had told the kid hes going to get back to the original owner (Me) and see what they want to do, until then he can hold on to the iphone since he hasnt talked to me, but he warned the kid that if that phone suddenly disappears hes going to have issues (we both knew he couldnt do anything because nothing had been proven yet, but the kid bought it) so he called me and told me, and he asked me if i wanted to pursue it, so before calling apple, i asked my cousin if it was a good idea if i could go there and speak with the kid with him, he said yes, but wed have to do it after his duty hours (yes we know its illeagal) and if anything serious were to break out i was prepared to just leave the kid with the phone and say nothing else.
So we went over to there knocked on the door, the kid was about 22 years old, and i asked him where he got the phone, he seemed a bit nervous when we were there, but my cousin told me he had never committed a crime or got in trouble, so i felt as if he was just a little scared.
I told him that i should probably call apple and tell them and theyre going to take the phone back, he got pretty upset and started crying, he said in his words "Please sir, ive been saving up for over a month to buy this, i couldnt afford a brand new one and i found this ad on craigslist, the phone was brand new in the box still, i didnt know it was stolen, please dont take it from me please!" he was genuinly scared, i told him to calm down, and its ok well figure it out, he then calmed down a bit, and i asked him if he could show me the ad. Now this is where i was certain this young man didnt take my phone, he immidiately went to his PC and pulled it up, the picture was my exact phone, and the way we identified it was the box had a small scrape on it, and it was visible in the picture, also, the kid was a white kid, and the person holding the phone was black, you could also see some of the background of the place the pic was taken and it didnt match his home at all.
I Felt really horrible about the whole thing i went to this kids house assuming that he stole my property and in more or less words if it was him (i wanted to see the look on his face when i took it back). he was extremely consistant with the story, no hesitations, he was either an extremely good liar or he was being honest, the kid lived on his own, his home was very clean, but it was in a **** neighborhood, but i could see this kid was a hard worker and honest.
I then did something you guys are probably gonna be like
about.
I did the right thing, i called apple, and told them to stop the investigation and that i found the phone, and that I would be happy to pay for the second one.
Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but to me, the money that kid had to spend on that phone was so hard for him to make, and he got what he wanted because he worked hard, to me on the other hand, that money wasnt much, and i have better means of making more of it than that kid did.
Anyway i thought id share this, 3 days ago was when i met with the kid, i dont regret letting it go, but now im pretty certain it was the driver that took it, i mean...**** the phone didnt even hit the ground yet and it was already stolen, so there is no way it was left outside of my house thats for sure, plus i had to sign for it, so unless someone knew it was going to be delivered to my house on that day and time and then bet on me not being home, in which i was home, then there is no way anyone else took it.
oh well, i wont be using UPS again.