Found iPhone 4 want to return but has password

[acfusion29]

i found a blackberry at work yesterday and was able to search through the contact list/recent calls even though it was password protected.

something similar should be implemented in the iPhone...

 

[iPhone3GCrazed]

They have not. Out of the clear blue one day around a month ago, I got an overnight Fedex delivery that I was not expecting. Showed the shipper to be Apple with me as the addressee. When I opened the box I was surprised to see an original iPhone in there.

I cannot tell you how many hours I spent on the phone with Apple, being transferred from one person to another, trying to figure out why they shipped me this iPhone.

In the meantime the phone wasn't locked and I went to email and found an email address. I then emailed the person from my desktop, asking if they were expecting an iPhone from Apple Care.

No one at Apple would tell me the owner of the phone, telling me that their record is not always up-to-date especially if the phone has been sold to someone else other than the original buyer.

Apple did send me a label and I shipped the phone back to them and gave me a contact name in case the owner of the iPhone were to answer my email.

Later in the day, I heard from the person I had emailed. He was sending the phone to Applecare for repair. He said they sent him the label addressed to me (remembered my name) but didn't question it thinking they knew what they were doing.

He thanked me over and over for sending the phone off to Apple and for giving him the contact name.

Yeah, they told me that they couldn't divulge the contact information because of some privacy thing.

That's a REALLY bad thing Apple did sending someone's iPhone to a completely wrong address. Imagine what they would have had to deal with if the person on the other end wasn't as honest and trustworthy as you. They should have given you something for your honesty, a gift card perhaps because, as unfortunate as this is, some people would have kept it.

 

[ericg301]

Where is this app? I can't find it in the App store or Cydia. Tx

App Store, search for "If Found, +"

 

[MrFuzz]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

I'm thinking everyone should make a contact called "Owner" and have it as your work/home or other important number. If you losse the phone and a honest person like the OP finds it, the Voice Dial would always have an easy goto number for peole to call to try and return the phone.

+1

Another idea is to just include your contact info on your lock screen. Then there's no excuse for someone who finds it. If they're a good person they can easily find you.

Mine says:

This phone belongs to xxxxx
I offer a significant reward for its return.
Please call 111-111-2222
Or email abc@me.com
In case of emergency contact 111-222-3333

You can use the notes app (or Pages on an iPad) to type it up, take a screen shot, and choose it as your lock screen.

 

[mstrze]

Mine says:

This phone belongs to xxxxx
I offer a significant reward for its return.
Please call 111-111-2222
Or email abc@me.com
In case of emergency contact 111-222-3333

Doesn't the phrase "I offer a significant reward for its return." make it all the more tempting for someone to perhaps steal your phone? Heck, if I found a phone that had handy contact info on the lock screen I would return it and not even expect a reward. I am sure 90% of the general public would too. Having that line on there is just making the return of the phone to you a more expensive process than it might need to be.

The more unscrupulous, whom you seem to be targetting, might even scoff at your opinion of what is 'significant' and sell it anyway if your price isn't high enough.

Seems like a lose-lose to have that line in there.