Theft from rental car by company

cobylu

HI First time post but advice greatly appreciated as not sure what to do next.

Currently stranded in floirida but thats another story.

returned hire car to a well known car hire company on sat a 12:40 as this was pre arranged before the problems with the volacano.
Got out of car. removed all baggage etc. Signed car over to hire company and it was driven off by an employee before I had chance to check properly. Walked about 100 metres and realised my iphone was in the dash. Ran back to the base and they said they would go and check in the car. Guy came back 5 mins later and said nothing in the car. I went to their office and asked to see the car myself but told it was in another secured section and could not. Tough luck basically and there are signs everywhere telling you to check the car. I then went into the airport and spoke to a police officer asking for advice and he said go back, tell them to ring the police if they would not let you look in the car. Did this and they refused saying there was nothing in the car. To cut a long story short 3 hours later a manager came to the car lot to speak to me. They checked the monitors to see who drove the car off and he had finished for the day but they would ask him in the morning (of course he's going to admit to it). The fact is they admitted the car had gone missing for an hour after I dropped it off.
I know I should have checked the car but it was 5 mins and the phone was definatelyt there. Its not the phone that annoys me its the photos of 2 weeks at disney for my kids that really gets me. And also the incompetence of the rental company to sort this quickly. If they had acted quickly the guy was still on the premises.

They have filled out an incident report but I know I am not going to get the phone back but really want to make a complaint.

Thanks

Chris

HouseHuntr

Carelessness costs, then again if you've got travel insurance you can get another phone.

As for not going to the 'secure area'. Who was going to physically stop you if you tried ?

Doesn't sound quite right to me !

cobylu

HouseHuntr wrote: »

Carelessness costs, then again if you've got travel insurance you can get another phone.

As for not going to the 'secure area'. Who was going to physically stop you if you tried ?

Doesn't sound quite right to me !

completely agree it was careless of me and the wife is still going mad at me. The phone is covered by separate insurance. The cars are taken to a secure compound next to the drop off area to be valeted. Eventually they did get the car to me (3 hours later when the manager turned up and the car had been found) but obviously there was nothing there and didn't expect there to be. Just annoys me the speed of the action by the rental company. I realise I have no real comback on them. Think I will go and see them tomorrow and find the result of the investigation.

drsquirrel

At least report the phone stolen, having your IMEI is beneficial here.

(Also I am not sure about GPS in iPhones? should have gotten yourself a tracking app for it that you can sms for the co-ords or automatically if the SIM is changed, I know these are around for Symbian and Android).

Maybe it can be banned from using the App store? I'm sure somewhere Apple can do this for specific codes (I assume at some point the store gets your imei).

maninthestreet

Have you tried calling the phone to see if anyone answers?

Ivory_Tinkler

Have you told the police about the CCTV footage showing who took the car after you got out? You need to file a report with the police yourself as this is technically theft and the thief can be identified.

pulliptears

drsquirrel wrote: »

At least report the phone stolen, having your IMEI is beneficial here.

(Also I am not sure about GPS in iPhones? should have gotten yourself a tracking app for it that you can sms for the co-ords or automatically if the SIM is changed, I know these are around for Symbian and Android).

Maybe it can be banned from using the App store? I'm sure somewhere Apple can do this for specific codes (I assume at some point the store gets your imei).

Once an iphone is reported as stolen it gets network blocked. Its a pretty brick after that point. You can use it as an ipod, but you can't use app store etc.

The 2 ways around that are:

a 2g iphone can have its IMEI changed through a simple piece of software and a little technical knowledge

3g and 3gs phones that are network blocked in this country will work in other countries, which is why you see a lot for sale on ebay stating "Will not work in the UK"

drsquirrel

Not all countries will block the IMEI, so the usual option for stolen phones etc are to ship them to countries where they just don't bother (although you also mentioned this ).

A "network block" and app store block are different things.