Real-life MMD: Whose lens is it anyway?

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Comments

  • If you had handed this into a police station and it went unclaimed for this long you would have already had it returned to you with the providence that it was yours to dispose of as you saw fit.

    Had this happen when I found some jewellery on pavement outside my house, 12 weeks later it was given back to me to keep (or sell).
  • TBagpuss
    TBagpuss Posts: 11,198
    First Post First Anniversary Name Dropper
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    Just to clarify, there is no question of illegality here, as (i) the package was addressed to the OPs home with no name, so it was addressed to the person who opened it.
    (ii)It is not illegal to open post addressed to someone else. it is illegal to" intentionally delay or open a postal packet in the course of its transmission by post" Once the package has been put through you door, it is no longer in the course of it's transmission by post.
    (iii) A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person’s detriment and without reasonable excuse, he opens a postal packet which he knows or reasonably suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him.So opening a letter or package which has been wrongly delivered, in order to try to identify the sender is perfectly legal. Opening a letter or package by mistake is perfectly legal. Opening a letter or package to try to identify the correct owner is perfectly legal.Opening a package to check it isn''t anything illegal or dangerous, before deciding whether to keep it around to see whether anyone picks it up is fine.

    In terms of the actual dilemma, I think the OP ought to check with neighbours as it's as least as likely that parcel was sent to the wrong numbered flat, as that it was intended for the previous occupant. However, once that is done, given the amount of time which has passed, and given that there was no seller or senders details, I do not think that it would be immoral to keep or sell the lens. However, if you are dtill worried, then as others have sugested, hand it in to the police as lost property and wait 6 weeks.
    All posts are my personal opinion, not formal advice Always get proper, professional advice (particularly about anything legal!)
  • sell it and spend the money on beer (or your fav tipple)
    if they had wanted it they would have contacted you. post or visited.
  • florere
    florere Posts: 104 Forumite
    "Go to the estate agent in person and ask for the last tenants details"

    Can't do that, the estate agent would be in deep trouble if he gave out that sort of confidential information
  • ronangel
    ronangel Posts: 124 Forumite
    florere wrote: »
    "Go to the estate agent in person and ask for the last tenants details"

    Can't do that, the estate agent would be in deep trouble if he gave out that sort of confidential information

    you could go to estate agent tell them about package from 6 months? ago and ask them to pass YOUR details to previous tenant to contact you if lens is theirs. All the the tenant would have to do is tell you make type and which camera it fitted and you would let them have it.
    The richard montgomery matter

  • What concerns me about this question is not the option of whether the OP did "enough" to find the rightful owner - and many valid points either way have been made here - but the reasoning that selling it is okay if some of the money is given to charity.

    The OP did nothing to 'earn' this 'windfall'. A company somewhere has made a loss in having to send out a replacement lens no doubt, and that may be their fault for not properly addressing/tracking their parcels when they send them - but that doesn't infer the OP has won a lottery of some kind as a result.

    Either sell the thing and give all the money to charity or make an attempt to determine where it should go. Keeping the proceeds is ethically poor form.
  • I dont think theres any problems. I was under the impression that anything addressed to you (ie the home address) that you didnt order was yours after a specific amount of time if you have tried to return it to the rightful owner. If there is no return address, and no one claims it within a month (or some other period of time), then it's legally yours (hence no moral problems)

    This was to stop companies sending out stuff (without an order) that would be charged for at a later date if it wasnt returned.
  • Seems to be a split between people who are happy to keep it and others who are not.

    The irony is by just sending one email, some people consider that going out of your way, but surely photographing the lens, making out an ebay advert, waiting for your auction to end, going to the post office to send it is actually more time consuming for you then making more effort to trace the actual owner. Funny how the pound signs in some people's eyes overlook that....
    ...maybe then when you post the lens it is delivered to the wrong address and you have to refund the buyer or start a lengthy claims process with the post office....watch out for karma biting your bum here.

    My point is really, so what if it takes a bit of effort to trace the owner, there is gratification to be had from doing that and making someone else's day. Once I found a crap phone on the bus, old, scratched, of no value at all. But the phone would ring from abroad and I couldn't understand the language not they spoke English. The next day I tried the numbers in the phone and had the same problem (using my phone and leaving messages) Eventually someone replied, I met them at the train station and gave her the phone, she was absolutely made up, she was a Bulgarian girl, not been here long and she was amazed someone had gone to such lengths, but it held all her numbers for her friends back home, it was far more important to her. In return, I was amazed I got given a pack of biscuits. Everyone left with a sense of faith in basic human kindness.

    Without knowing more information though, like was there a return address, a courier reference maybe, or was it just delivered by royal mail with a house number and no return address and no paperwork? You'd be surprised with even one nugget of information how you can trace something, if it was a courier, even without their reference you can start the ball rolling trying to trace it.

    Think of the bigger picture, if it's a couriers member of staff, they may be in trouble for losing a parcel, someone else has had to probably make a great deal of effort to trace the item, the sender may have lost out too having to replace the item.
  • I've read through all the posts so far and there seems to be a number of posts which say about the amount of effort that should be made to reunite the parcel with the owner.

    In my opinion, there's a cost to that effort - in terms of time (sending e-mails, making calls) and money (cost of phone calls etc) and inconvenience (holding the package for a period of time, making a specific effort to contact couriers/landlords etc). Therefore, I would take the value of the goods when sold as my compensation, unless of course the person is found through this process.

    If it turns out to be an organisation, such as parcel delivery company, who is found to be the 'owner' of the item (by virtue of having compensated the original recipient for a lost item claim) then I would again be inclined to keep it or ask for fair compensation for returning the item (including all the effort made above to track down the company). If you find the person, hopefully they will compensate you for the effort made in holding their parcel and tracking them down.
  • fatal1955
    fatal1955 Posts: 58 Forumite
    edited 22 November 2012 at 11:42AM
    (comment deleted by poster)
This discussion has been closed.
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