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Bug Sends Lost-Phone Seekers To Same Wrong Address
netbuzz writes "A mysterious GPS-tracking glitch has brought a parade of lost-phone seekers — and police officers — to the front door of a single beleaguered homeowner in Las Vegas. Each of the unexpected visitors – Sprint customers all — has arrived absolutely convinced that the man has their phone. Not so, police confirm. The same thing happened in New Orleans in 2011 and Sprint got sued. Says the Las Vegas man: 'It's very difficult to say, 'I don't have your phone,' in any other way other than, 'I don't have your phone.''"
Something along the lines of "Yes, the tracker says your Phone is here. No, it is not. Please call SPRINT at 1-800-xxx-xxxx" Lo-tech, but effective.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
it has been over a year and sprint can't fix the problem
a nice letter to their legal department may move things along
While frustrating for him, from the outside looking in, it's kinda funny. No matter what he does to assert his innocence, it will appear as lies to the owner of the missing phone...
Ken
Open an Apple store there. Sell iPhones. The people showing up are inevitably short a phone.
I'm surprised Apple hasn't patented this yet.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why are these people showing up at his door anyhow?
Isn't that the job of the police, and isn't vigilantism illegal even in Las Vegas?
Wow, thanks for pointing out the contents of the summary.
If everyone had a gnu, this would not be a problem.
--frank[at]unternet.org
"These aren't the GPS coordinates you are looking for."
(Well, that's better than, say "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of people looking for lost phones")
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I skimmed the submission, it rang a bell, I searched it, submission on front page, I pasted and Wham! Instant tit head!
Thems the breaks
Watch those corners
you would have to read it. I guess your idea sucks because he has put up a sign already and you didn't read enough to know it. Bright, you are not.
Sent from my ENIAC
I'd start stealing phones. How would Sprint know the difference?
That is all.
Your sign should
1 have a pentacle (assumes you are not a JC type person)
2 state solicitors will be shot/eaten/sacrificed
3 request that 1 case of thin mints and 1 case of samosas be delivered (does the GSA have an EStore??)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
And this is what happens when you don't know how to design a working GPS
I would be ill advised for anyone tracking a phone to go to the address and accuse the occupants of having it.
There are many possible outcomes, most are less than optimal.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
And if everyone had a nug, this would not be a problem.
So I conclude this hasn't involved an iPhone. Otherwise at least one of the stories would've worded it as "iPhone owners and a few random others", because news writers seem to think that's the only phone that'll draw readers.
#DeleteChrome
I'll bet his phone number is 867-5309 too.
I wonder if this is what Sprint does when people want to leave them for another carrier. Or are considering leaving.
'It's very difficult to say, 'I don't have your phone,' in any other way other than, 'I don't have your phone.''"
I suppose keeping some copies of this news article by the door and handing them out might help a bit.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The linked to article sucks. Here is a better one with much more detail.
http://llodo.com/lost-phone-dont-blame-wayne-dobson.html
while cycling to work I find a phone in the road. someone obviously left it on top of the car.
Get to work and call a number in the address book, say I found the phone and they should contact whoever callerID is so they can get it back.
minutes later an angry person calls ranting about me calling people from their phone.
Opps, phone just fell in the trash. Good luck finding it.
If everyone had NGU, this would be a bigger problem.
They should change the default address to 1060 W. Addison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsHjW8rBRk0
No way this guy is going to get caught now.
Yes, this poor man would be dead.
http://xkcd.com/1105/
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Had the same kind of thing happen with a laptop at work. It got stolen from the guy's car. It had Computrace on it so we called them up and had it fired up. After a fair bit of time the police were ready and used the info to go and arrest the people (who of course had a bunch of stolen goods). They then had to hang on to the laptop for like 9 months as evidence even though it was a pretty clear and quick, by court standards, case.
Thing is not only does it take some time for the prosecution to get everything ready (make sure they aren't missing anything and so on) but defense attorneys quite often wish to delay things to distance their client from the event, and to have time to try and negotiate a better plea. As such it can take a lot of time, even when things are straight forward.
Unless Sprint gave them the app (they didn't) or the information to get to the house (they didn't), it has nothing to do with Sprint.
yeah, but do you know how hard it is to get a wildebeest in Vegas?
+1 Disagree
Yep, but if they continue to call knowing that the debtor isn't there, they're in violation of various sections of the FDCPA. It's not usually hard to track the phone number back to a collections agency, they're not real good at hiding themselves. And once I know that, I respond to their question with "Is this $NAMEOFCOLLECTIONAGENCY?". That puts them in a bind and how they answer doesn't change the substance of my next statement, only it's phrasing: "The person XXXXX you are trying to contact does not live here and can't be contacted through this number. If you continue to call this number I will consider it harassment and a violation of the FDCPA.". Then I hang up. If I'm really annoyed and anticipating actually doing anything to them, I'd print out a quick little letter and spend a few bucks on registered mail, return receipt requested to their office. But if they really aren't calling for me or anyone here, usually just being firm gets them to stop, because they don't want the hassle and expense of sending someone to small-claims court and they really don't want the hassle of dealing with a default judgement if they don't. Judges may be unsympathetic to people trying to get free money via FDCPA/TCPA complaints, but it's easy to frame the complaint instead as an aggrieved uninvolved party who just wants the phone calls to stop who's faced with a company that just won't accept the truth.
If you're female, filing the harassing-calls paperwork might produce interesting results. Female getting calls at all hours, faked caller ID information, dead air (robodialer trying to find an agent to hand the call to) or a male who won't identify themselves (agent instructed not to give out information), you're getting creeped out by it (you probably are), that should get the incident routed over to Vice as a potential stalker.
So the tower has an unfortunate coming together at night with an angle grinder - action direct :-) btw i am joking
This problem has also occurred in Grand Rapids, MI, also with Sprint. The most notable manifestation of this problem occurred while police were chasing a mass murderer a couple of years ago, and ended up at the wrong house:
The homeowner, Jeff DeVries, married with two children, said neighbors called him at work, saying police were outside his home, guns drawn. He called police, who told him to come to the scene.
Once he got there they went into the house and found only the dog, in its crate. His wife was at work and his kids were at daycare.
The homeowner said there appears to be a network problem with Sprint. He said that for the last two months, people have been stopping by his home to say that they were told their phone was there. He had been trying to resolve it with the company, but to no avail.
I skimmed the submission, it rang a bell, I searched it, submission on front page, I pasted and Wham! Instant tit head!
Thems the breaks
That's terrible, reading anything in the submission should be a crime. We managed to ban articles back in 2005, but skimming submissions is far to close to "informed"
It isn't even the second time, as others have pointed out.
Considering the problem appears to be about a rough cell tower-based location being reported as a GPS-accurate location, I only find it interesting that this doesn't happen far more often.
"'It's very difficult to say, 'I don't have your phone,' in any other way other than, 'I don't have your phone.'''
No, it's easy: "My neighbor steals phones all the time. Maybe you should try his house"
Why pick on your neighbor?
Find the address of a Sprint exec, claim he knows where their phone is, and it might actually get fixed.
I'd rather give ad revenue to bottom feeding blog scraper scumbags than the bottom feeding copyright troll scumbags that founded Righthaven, thanks.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Once, a local tire company had a huge tire sale, and printed my phone number instead of theirs as the contact. I was getting phone numbers for (the now defunct) "Mark Morris Tires" for months. Fortunately, they didn't come after me looking for stolen tires. The punchline is that they actually did it twice, reusing the art for the prior ad a year later, after I had called them and complained!
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
Even if he did, what are the people expecting when they show up at his door? "Uhhhh, ya sorry, you got me. I have your phone".