Stolen phone

I've had one phone stolen in my lifetime, and it was a Nokia model with a blue screen.

Someone swiped it while I was playing basketball with some friends at the gym one day. Not sure why I even brought the damn thing with me, but I had a replacement within a few minutes and the cell phone company I was with at the time had the service turned off rather quickly.

Company gave me the same model phone free of charge, too, even though I wouldn't have had to pay a whole helluva lot for it.

 

Or a small explosive device. If your phone is stolen, just go to a computer, type in a passcode, and the phone explodes.

Phone theft would drop to zero within a few weeks. Problem solved.

Well, at least one can dream.

 

There are some negatives to these ideas of course... and I don't want to give anyone any ideas.

But blowing up people who steal stuff does sound rather nice.

 

Starman? Is that you?

 

I would've just switched services so that new service paid off my early withdrawal fee.

 

Years ago, my then-wife lost/had her phone stolen. It was a Nokia phone and we had the pay-as-you plan.
Called the phone and a guy answered. Asked him to return it. He said no. We kept calling until we used up the remaining units (minutes).

 

And he kept talking to you all for extended periods of time? Did you bait him with a ransom offer or something?

 

Watching the CBS shows last night on TV, saw the new Verizon commercial about a dozen times. Looked closer into it today and it's a bit more complicated than $45 drop the mic. It's $45 per line for 4 lines, more per line for 3 or 2 or 1 line.
AND (this one pisses me off) you have to sign up for autopay. I never autopay if possible. I don't want people taking money out of my account. I will pay you each month. Email me a bill and I will pay it.
Still need look into this further because I need a new phone.

 

My first cell provider was Sprint. It was low-cost and relatively good coverage, so I had it for about six or seven years. I took a swim with my phone in my pocket in December of 2009 (I was living in Hawaii at the time), maybe two months before I was due for an upgrade (i.e., a $0.99 phone). I had a cross-country flight the next day and really didn't want to be without a phone in case I needed to get in touch with my ride.

Went to the Sprint store to see if they could do anything to help me out and they refused to give me an early upgrade. Best they could do was to sell me a phone for $100, one that had significantly fewer features than the 99-cent upgrade model.

My early termination fee was like $120. I told them I would eat the cost and go somewhere else if I couldn't get the early upgrade. They wouldn't budge, so I terminated my service, literally walked two or three doors over to the AT&T store and got a free iPhone 3G. Have been with AT&T ever since.

I was paying $45/month for my Sprint service (a figure that likely would have gone up over the past seven-plus years), meaning I would have paid them at least $3,900 in the last 85 months. But, hey, at least Sprint got that extra $20!

 

Didn't bait him, but he would continually answer the phone. Each time he answered the phone or a voice mail was automatically one unit (minute), then each minute after that was another unit.

 

This happened to me once playing basketball. Had my phone in my bag at the gym and saw two teenagers huddling around my bag. By the time I started walking over there, they dashed out of the gym and I couldn't catch them.

Fired up that ol' Find My iPhone app, locked the phone (with a nice "fuck you" message sent as I locked it), called the police and they had me ride with them to where the GPS said the phone was. They marched the kids out of a house, had me ID them, and got the phone back.

It took like two hours. I was very impressed with the police department, considering I was living in a large metropolitan city at the time and I figured they'd have more important things to do.