How Honest Are You?

[RonJeremy]

You really want to waste your life trying to phone them up and explain the problem??

You know full well you'll be sent round the houses, and then they'd probably take the hundred quid back themselves and let you give them an extra hundred quid on top.

 

Do you think they would be so forthcoming if the situation was reversed??

 

No, you'd spend 6 weeks continually ringing them chasing the missing money!

 

For incorrectly given away handsets press 1...

to be honest and return handset press 2...............

to be kept on hold for 25 mins press 3...........................................

 

Keep it - if they find out tell them you tried to contact customer service and there was no option for it.

If you try to do the right thing it is likely it will bite you on the s

[Bottletop]

For me it would depend on which company it was. I've had no end of problems with O2 and Vodafone in the past with their useless and very poor customer service. Having wasted several months of my life chasing through the Financial Ombudsman etc to finally receive what I was owed I'd say keep the phone and let them do the chasing round - if they would at all!

 

However I'm now with EE and they have been excellent, no qualms for me. Easy to contact and get hold of actual people, good service and always helped me out very quickly. So I'd do the 'honest' thing for them and get it sorted out above board.

[Cyclone]

imei. Google it

 

They don't care about the imei, I could buy a new phone off contract and put my sim in it without notifying my network provider.

 

---------- Post added 16-06-2015 at 14:59 ----------

 

They do have a record, through the shop records. As to finding out that you have it, if the shop doesn't have that data in their transaction record (which would be surprising, since you upgraded the phone with the same network provider), they can try and match based on the phone number which you have kept.

 

It sounds like one of those cases of the right hand database not knowing what the left hand database is doing - yet. I'm reasonably confident they'll eventually reconcile.

 

As to whether they come knocking on your door for the money - they might (in the name of profits...or morality ), they might not (in the name of good customer relationships).

Computer IMEI says no.

 

When your phone sends keep-alive signals to the network (local cell) these signals include the IMEI. So network telcos automatically know which phone is in which country.

 

How do you think telcos know that you're roaming without you ever having to tell them?

 

Not the imei, you're roaming even if you put your own sim into a foreign mobile (whilst abroad), it's the sim registration that matters for the contract, not the imei.

[MikeFrank]

They do have a record, through the shop records. As to finding out that you have it, if the shop doesn't have that data in their transaction record (which would be surprising, since you upgraded the phone with the same network provider), they can try and match based on the phone number which you have kept.

 

It sounds like one of those cases of the right hand database not knowing what the left hand database is doing - yet. I'm reasonably confident they'll eventually reconcile.

 

As to whether they come knocking on your door for the money - they might (in the name of profits...or morality ), they might not (in the name of good customer relationships).

Computer IMEI says no.

 

When your phone sends keep-alive signals to the network (local cell) these signals include the IMEI. So network telcos automatically know which phone is in which country.

 

How do you think telcos know that you're roaming without you ever having to tell them?

 

I think its something to do with the chap who gave me the phone.. I hope he doesn't come on here and realize He probably forgot to log it on a computer or something... No doubt they sell plenty of phones per week so he just picked one off a pile and gave it to me... how would the store know which individual phone went to which customer... maybe if they scanned the bar code... but they have no record of me going in the shop... i suppose they could trace it by the IMEI but they have no idea who has it... they'd have to pay someone to track it down... I can't see them bothering.. Massive world companies like them must write quite a lot off through internal theft and the like... we'll see

 

---------- Post added 16-06-2015 at 15:10 ----------

 

Does the following line not cancel out the above statements?

 

 

 

...............................................................

 

 

 

Then don't tell them and keep it, just don't keep harping on about how squeaky clean you are.

 

Okay thanks for that interesting, humorous contribution

[tinfoilhat]

Hang onto it. Vodafone owe me money and I'm never getting it back after they've denied conversations that took place and countless other things but I haven't got the time to keep chasing it.

[MikeFrank]

Hang onto it. Vodafone owe me money and I'm never getting it back after they've denied conversations that took place and countless other things but I haven't got the time to keep chasing it.

 

I'm going to.. If it had been a local shop I would have said something but a massive company won't miss a hundred quid... Anyway I must be mad. I had a lot of trouble with the previous one... had it in for repair twice and they refused to replace it when it went wrong again... so stuff em

[Cyclone]

If they determine that the phone has been stolen they'll just block it, which means it will be blocked by imei (this is where imei does matter) from all UK and european networks.

 

They probably could use their databases to associate the imei and the sim and thus the user, that wouldn't (you'd expect) be difficult. But I bet they wouldn't bother.

[Leah-Lacie]

I'm going to.. If it had been a local shop I would have said something but a massive company won't miss a hundred quid... Anyway I must be mad. I had a lot of trouble with the previous one... had it in for repair twice and they refused to replace it when it went wrong again... so stuff em

 

Just hold onto it. I had a similar problem last year, where they sent me the wrong phone. My phone had broken, and I couldn't upgrade for 3 months so they advised me to take out an extra line and pay for both for 3 months until my contract was up. Then once my contract ended I could cancel the original line and use the extra one. It was cheaper than buying a new phone. They sent me the wrong phone though, Ace 3 instead of S4, which was obviously a considerable price difference so I rang up to complain. They just apologised, told me to keep the new phone free of charge, and cancelled the extra line contract, so I could carry on using the original one in my new phone. This was with EE by the way. I could then upgrade again 3 months later to a better phone on the original contract.

[L00b]

They don't care about the imei, I could buy a new phone off contract and put my sim in it without notifying my network provider.

Partially right, partially wrong: it's country-dependent (not all countries operate an EIR). The UK does, but nationally only (unless that's changed since I last looked at it). The Netherlands didn't used to, again dunno if that's changed.

 

In the example you give, your network provider would just record the (new) IMEI against the (known) IMSI in their db. You could still report the phone as stolen (if it happens) and it could still get blocked.

Not the imei, you're roaming even if you put your own sim into a foreign mobile (whilst abroad), it's the sim registration that matters for the contract, not the imei.

Right about the roaming 'strictly speaking', however how do you think a handset reported stolen can be and stay blocked by networks?

 

When a MS is connected to a network, the network can give it the identify command at any time. In response to this command the MS will transmit its IMSI, identifying the SIM, and IMEI, identifying the physical phone (ME). The IMSI ends up at the HLR, but the IMEI is checked against the stored identifiers in the EIR (if the network maintains one - see above).

 

The command is always given when the MS first connects to a network (like after a shutdown/start-up sequence, e.g. if you turned it off during a flight -where I was coming from re. 'roaming' above), and frequently given in network keep-alive signals: not every keep-alive signal of course, as that'd eat battery life like there's no tomorrow (and husbanding battery life is what research in cellular signal processing was pretty much all about BITD of 3G/4G tech...positively ancient by now), but every so often so that a stolen phone can be blocked very shortly after it's IMEI makes it onto an EIR.

 

Edited June 16, 2015 by L00b

[max]

Send their Head Office a recorded delivery letter explaining the situation and then sit back. If they action it you've not lost anything and if they don't you've proof that you are honest.

 

Do not rely on random strangers to tell you whether you're honest or not, only you know.