can apple help with my stolen powerbook?

[f-matic]

so i came home from work to find that my apartment door has been kicked down and my powerbook stolen -- gotta love living in brooklyn! i reported the incident to the police, though i don't really have any confidence that they'll track this thing down. i was wondering if anyone knew if apple still had a process whereby they recorded stolen serial numbers in case anyone tries to register the laptop after reinstalling the OS? i tried calling apple, but i was told i have to have the police call with the report number, and i tried explaining this to the woman at the brooklyn police department but i'm highly doubtful she will end up calling apple on my behalf. i also tried looking through the apple support site but the document about reporting stolen laptops just said to refer to the local police department. i swear i had heard something a while ago about reporting stolen serial numbers to apple -- does anyone have any info on that?

(oh, and just in case anyone happens to be scouring brooklyn classifieds, if you see anyone selling a powerbook 12", 1.33ghz, 768mb ram, with no original packagining or adapters -- let me know!!)

thanks

nick

 

[Solafaa]

Oh that must suck, i am sorry. I hope you have your stuff backed-up. I would go down to the police department and try to exploan to them what happend. I will try to call apple a few times, you might get someone helpfull.

 

[varmit]

Even though they don't advertise it, I believe they have sometimes helped find stolen property, but it is more of the ISPs that can help more. Since each network card has its own Mac Address, an ISP can see that your Mac's Mac Address is being used again to access the internet. Again, I think its more of Apple asking the ISPs to help out, and not Apple doing all the work, but they might be able to, so call them up. Give serial number and everything.

 

[SilentPanda]

Although it does stink that your 'book was stolen... do you have insurance that will cover it? Sounds like it's time for an upgrade... not that you can really currently upgrade much from what you had but... yeah.

 

[f-matic]

sadly no -- being in brooklyn, i've always been renting places, and never really bothered looking into renter's insurance. my neighborhood is fairly nice and none of my friends in the area have had any problems. but of course, as i found out, that doesn't mean much....

and yeah, it would be a good excuse to upgrade if only there was something to upgrade to! guess i'll just wait for the next powerbook revision and see how much money i have. or cross fingers that the police find the laptop -- i give it about a 0.02% chance of happening...

 

[virividox]

sorry to hear about ur unfortunate incident, just be glad that you werent in when they took it and nto harmed.

maybe next time u get a powerbook you may wanna look into a kesington lock for your laptop. sure you can use bolt cutters to get through, but if its crime of oppertunity they may not bother; then again if a criminal is determine to take something they always find a way

good luck it he future

 

[f-matic]

yup

you're totally right, and i am thankful i was at work at the time. i'd rather have a stolen laptop than bodily injury, that's for sure.

the funny thing is i also have a non-functioning pismo and a frankenstein-looking lombard with all sorts of home-modified wires hanging out of it, which they cased over (they were both lying on the floor of my apartment when i got back) but evidently decided they were too crappy to steal. but they did steal a stack of old pcmcia cards, the most valuable of which was a datafax 56k modem card circa 1998! and they thank god missed this laptop i've been trying to repair for work -- a relatively new dell latitude with a broken pcmcia slot. so perhaps i'll just head to tekserve to see if they can get my pismo working again and go back to using that. maybe a low resale value isn't the worst thing in the world.

thanks for all the advice,

nick

 

[SiliconAddict]

Damn that blows.

A couple things. First call Apple again. Say the magic words “Hi, [insert their name here] I want this escalated this to a manager, please.” Bypass the idiot peons on the phone if at all possible.

Second and this is import to do today!
Find the closest Apple stores to you: http://www.apple.com/buy/
Find any CompUSAs or any other stores that may carry accessories. Report it stolen there as well and again give them your S/N if you have it. They need power after all. In all likelihood they aren’t going to bring the device in but there is always a chance.

And in the future I would highly recommend:
http://www.stealthsignal.com

What happens when your computer has been lost or stolen? Don't you wish your computer could call you and tell you its' location. Well, that is exactly what the XTool™ Computer Tracker does! It is a software based transmitter that once installed uses the Internet or a phone line to send a signal, reporting its location to our Control Center.

Its not going to recover your laptop now but at least in the future you know about it. I've been installing this type of software (Windows versions are way more common place.) since my first laptop in '98. Most services run you $40-80 a year. IMHO its well worth the price on a $1000+ purchase.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Even though they don't advertise it, I believe they have sometimes helped find stolen property, but it is more of the ISPs that can help more. Since each network card has its own Mac Address, an ISP can see that your Mac's Mac Address is being used again to access the internet. Again, I think its more of Apple asking the ISPs to help out, and not Apple doing all the work, but they might be able to, so call them up. Give serial number and everything.

ISPs aren't going to do a dang thing for anyone other then the cops. Check that cops with a subpoena.

 

[maya]

Sorry to hear what happened?

No Apple cannot do anything except sell you another Mac.

At times like these one kicks themselves for getting insurance, however if you rented the place the landlord should have a general insurance policy or some sort for tenants and they belongings if sometime were to happen to the place, say for example: fire, water damage, flooding, earthquakes, etc.. I am not sure if theft is covered then again various policies cover different things under different conditions, try talking to the landlord in this regard to it.

All the best in trying to recover what was lost.

 

[Norouzi]

That really sucks. On the same line, I know Apple can track serial numbers, at least for their dealers. I worked for an Apple Specialist for a while, and durring the first month that I was there someone lifted an iBook from us. Just unpluged it and walked out the door (this was before we put locks on them). So we called the police and reported it stolen, and reported it to Apple and gave them the serial #. About 3 months went by and we had long given up hope that it would be found. Then one day we get a call from the police saying they've found it. Apparently the guy who stole it sold it to someone. The had a problem and called Apple. When Apple asked for the serial number to see if their machine was under warranty it came up as stolen, and Apple called the police. The iBook was pretty beat up when we got it back, but we did get it back in the end.
I don't know if Apple can do anything for a consumer in this situation, but it's always possible, I'd definatily see if you could get them to list it as stolen but definatily try to talk to someone in charge.

 

[f-matic]

hey, thank you for all the advice on here so far! but i'm having a hard time getting through to anyone at apple -- i keep getting the line that only the police can report a stolen laptop, and i can't get the brooklyn pd to report this for me. i looked through the apple site for more info and found this:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300066

do they no longer track any serial numbers then? or if anyone has had any success, could you let me know what number to call? i've been directed to a few different 800 numbers but none have done much good so far...

thanks again,

nick

 

[f-matic]

also

as a side note, i realized yesterday night that they did indeed swipe the powerbook g4 adapter -- in addition to every other laptop adapter they could find (i guess they couldn't work out which one was the g4 adapter). which means i now have no adapters for the old g3 laptops, which means it's probably not worth taking them to tekserve to try and get them fixed. grrrrr. and after cleaning up the mess in my room, i also realized they took my minidisc player and my gameboy.

i hate thieves....

 

[maya]

hey, thank you for all the advice on here so far! but i'm having a hard time getting through to anyone at apple -- i keep getting the line that only the police can report a stolen laptop, and i can't get the brooklyn pd to report this for me. i looked through the apple site for more info and found this:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300066

do they no longer track any serial numbers then? or if anyone has had any success, could you let me know what number to call? i've been directed to a few different 800 numbers but none have done much good so far...

thanks again,

nick

Tracking will have little to no success, this is why:

Someone has to call in Apple to register the product. I never had to do so since when its scanned the information and person buying it is sent to Apple.

When you call in, at times you have to give your register to get any help or to fix an issue with the product.

Also there is another way, one has to take the hardware to an Apple Tech and its scanned there to get the components for the model, etc... for your product.

If you have success with tracking the product great, if not I would not be surprised.