Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3

Original poster

Does nobody hand in lost property any more?

60 replies

EduCated · 24/04/2017 07:48

I've seen three 'lost property' posts on Facebook and it's not even 8am. All things found out and about, and asking people to share to 'reunite' the items with their owners.

The last is a child's wallet with money in it, found in a shop. Try bloody leaving it in the shop! Far more likely to find it there than from some person on FB. Others were items found at a park near a visitors centre, and on a train.

Seem to be seeing it more and more lately, and just don't understand why you wouldn't hand it in (maybe, maybe if you are in the middle of nowhere and there's nowhere sensible to hand it in I can understand).

AIBU to find this mildly irritating?

OP posts:

peachgreen · 24/04/2017 08:32

YANBU. People do it for attention and it drives me mad.

achara · 24/04/2017 08:34

My son left his phone in a cafe in Dublin. A very kind person handed it in at the cafe but before that they looked through the contacts and left a message on my home phone. Luckily they did as when my son went to get it they said they didn't have it. I had to go in and demand it. So I would prefer to try get it back myself.
(PS long time lurker)

user1492287253 · 24/04/2017 08:41

I think it depends. I have been pretty lucky. My wallet has been returned 3 times. Twice via the police and most recently at the natural history museum. Each time other people went out of their way to hand in . The last time there was 70 quid in cash still intact. My dd had her bag stolen in a park in london. The theif took all the valuables but someone else still went to the trouble of handing it in to the police station at green park when they found it weeks later. So she had the bag back plus all her sentimental bits and peices in it.
I always hand stuff in. Theres a chance that it might not get back in the right hands but i feel ive done what i can.

katronfon · 24/04/2017 08:48

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Badbadbunny · 24/04/2017 08:53

Plus due to cutbacks our police station is hardly ever open for stuff like that

Apart from them being closed more, some won't even accept lost property anymore. At best they'll log it and tell you to take it home with you. At worst, they won't even log it.

GaelicSiog · 24/04/2017 08:53

I call it "hero syndrome." People don't want to be the person who handed it in where they found it, they want to be the hero who returned it to its owner. The problem being the owner is much more likely to find it where they lost it than on Facebook.

silkpyjamasallday · 24/04/2017 09:12

I agree with PP that it is an attention seeking behaviour from the finder, livens up their Facebook feed and makes them feel like a good person.

Not everyone uses Facebook, I don't, so I wouldn't be able to find something I had lost if the finder thought it best to take whatever I'd lost home and make a Facebook post about it.

If you can't remember where you lost it then maybe it would be useful, but most adults would be able to retrace their steps and check with the lost property at the tube station or cafe they were at, if someone has decided that they need to be the hero who returns the item and taken it with them then the lost property have no idea about it and someone who has been looking themselves will never find it.

My DP is constantly losing things, card, keys, phone, passport and all have been handed in where we were or taken to the police station. In a lost phone situation if they are unlocked I always call or text 'mum' in the contacts and that usually works as letting someone know it's been handed to the lost property/police

treaclesoda · 24/04/2017 09:19

I think some people maybe do it for attention, but most people aren't arses, they probably just haven't thought it through all that well. A lot of people, in all areas of life, are of the 'if you want something done, do it yourself' school of thought, so I'd imagine for those people they think that they are far more likely to reunite it with their owner than some random stranger. They might be misguided, but I don't necessarily think they are attention seeking.

MyOtherNameIsTaken · 24/04/2017 09:28

Years ago the home phone kept ringing but when I answered it they hung up. Every time. My OH then answered it the next time and someone said "have you lost a mobile phone?" (I had) he then asked "did you phone before?" and they replied "yes but a female kept answering and it's a mobile phone I found" he then said that my partner (I) would be along to collect her phone (from the tea shop in the park) but when I went in and asked for the phone I heard someone in the kitchen say "there's a lady here for that mobile, should I give it to her?"

It was only after a head looked around the door and looked me up and down that they agreed that a lady might actually have a mobile phone. Annoyed me at the time but now it's just amusing.

PutABitofButteronTheSpudsAndre · 24/04/2017 09:58

Jeez well I feel like shit now. Thanks a fucking bunch.
I found a jelly cat yesterday and posted it on the local Facebook page (which has massive coverage around here).
What I DIDNT say on the post was that I had handed it into the shop and I didn't say what shop it was. I didn't want some knarly f*cker coming and claiming it. If someone contacted me I would have told them it was there and if they went to the shop directly they would have found it too.
Double the chance of it being found.
Bear in mind that any of the 'attention seekers' your blathering on about so blithely have quite likely done the same thing.
Go find someone doing a BAD thing to slag off why don't you.

Teabagtits · 24/04/2017 10:04

I found an iPhone outside a cafe and we did hand it into the police but I also posted on twitter asking if anyone knew who x was (who had sent a text to the phone when I found it ) and could they ask them to tell the intended recipient that the phone had been handed in to the local police station. The person happened to be on twitter and passed the message on and phone was reunited with the owner. There were no thanks however. I understand why someone might post found x at y but I don't understand why it wouldn't also be handed to police.

SaucyJack · 24/04/2017 10:16

Actually, I've seen a fair amount of lost property reunited with the owner on our local FB site so I think these days it's as valid a thing as anything else to do to be helpful.

Our town is quite small tho.

PaintingByNumbers · 24/04/2017 10:22

it says a lot more about the people who automatically think "oooh hero syndrome" or "attention seeker" tbh. I wouldnt let it worry you. some people are just like that.

BikeRunSki · 24/04/2017 10:29

I do

Handed in a phone DS found on an airport bus last week, to the airport lost property (bus driver wouldn't take it).

Found a handbag outside a pub on an evening run a few weeks ago, handed into the pub, then posted a very non-descriptive post saying it had been handed in to the pub.

BikeRunSki · 24/04/2017 10:30

Sorry, posted to village FB page that it was at the pub.

jarhead123 · 24/04/2017 10:36

I think people do the whole sharing on FB thing for the glory - 'look what I found, I want to reunite this person' etc

FerrisMewler · 24/04/2017 10:40

I've found wallets in shops and on the bus. I handed them in to the bus driver and the sales assistant. I have to admit that I'm always paranoid that otherwise someone might see me with them and think that I've taken them. .

I've also found a bundle of important documents in the road (including passport, birth and marriage certificates etc). The nearest police station is now miles away. If I'd been a bit more knowledgeable about social media, I might well have used it to try to find the owner.

In the end I managed to get them back to the owner by phoning a couple of the most likely buildings in the area and asking if anyone had reported them missing. It turned out that the owner had driven off with the folder still on the roof of their car and it had all fallen off further down the road.

Original poster

EduCated · 24/04/2017 10:40

I think posting that something had been handed in is different - it's not relying on someone seeing FB. I suppose it is possible that they have done his, but not mentioned handing it in (as Spuds did), although the wording and photos of the ones I saw this morning, and of other I've seen before, very much imply that they've got the items they're talking about.

We're also somewhere that doesn't have an active/popular local group or similar, so they're all over the shop.

OP posts:

Badbadbunny · 24/04/2017 10:59

If you can't remember where you lost it then maybe it would be useful, but most adults would be able to retrace their steps and check with the lost property at the tube station or cafe they were at

You can't possibly check every place that it may have been handed into. I lost my house keys. It would have been sometime between 8am and 6pm on a work day. Must have fallen out of my pocket. As I'd walked to/from home, first thing I did was walk back to work looking on the roadside and footpaths to see if they were within sight - nothing. Back at work, I ransacked my office, then went to the two shops I visited at lunchtime, and another couple of nearby shops just in case I'd dropped them outside them as I was dealing with my money/shopping. Absolutely nothing. Phoned police, nothing reported as found.

When I finally got back in the house (after getting a relative to drop off their set of spare house keys), I logged onto FC. There they were on a local page. Turned out I'd dropped them on the road close to a pub that was set back in it's own large car park - the finder had handed them into the pub thinking it was one of their customers who'd dropped them. I'd never in a million years have thought of going into the pub to ask. Without FB, I'd have lost them and had to replace 3 sets of house keys/locks. Yes, it was good of a passer-by to hand them in, but without also posting it on FB, I'd have never known where. It was very nearly a case of a do-gooder thinking they were doing the right thing, but actually not, if they'd not been on FB too!

I don't think it's attention seeking at all. Whether you keep them or hand them in to some random place, putting it on FB is the right thing to do.

Thinkingblonde · 24/04/2017 11:03

Someone found a credit card in a shop and put a photo of it on Facebook. Complete with all identifying details. I said she'd have been better off handing it in to the bank named on the card.
When I worked in retail we got a £25.00 reward from the issuer if we came across a lost card. Or if the customer forgot to pick it up at the end of the transaction.
If it was a stolen card and we retained if we got £100.00 reward! (The police sent out details of stolen cards)
I don't know if that still happens now though. (The reward )

MongerTruffle · 24/04/2017 11:34

Someone found a credit card in a shop and put a photo of it on Facebook.

I've seen someone do that. She really didn't think it through when people asked her to post the back of her card as well.

StarlingMurderation · 24/04/2017 11:46

My son lost his favourite stuffed toy in the hospital car park after an appointment - when we get home, I called the hospital switchboard, explained what had happened, and even Pugh it was dark by then. The nice switchboard lady contacted the car park security guy, who went looking for the toy in the park with a torch. Ho found it and we picked it up the next day. So there are some nice people out there, at least!

I remember when I was in my teens, finding a gold and garnet necklace on the street early on a Sunday morning. There was nowhere to hand it in, really, so we put an ad in the local paper's Lost and Found column (which probably doesn't even exist these days). The owner saw the ad, called and described the necklace, then when she came to pick it up, brought a tenner in a thank you card for me and a bunch of flowers for my mum for "bringing me up well"! It turned out the garnet had been brought back from Burma by her mum and had been made into a pendent, so she was so happy to get it back. Still makes me feel good even now.

ShotsFired · 24/04/2017 12:00

I lost my car key a while ago. I had been from my car to 2 places and I searched every inch of the short distance between all three - nothing. My local police station had a box for keys and sunglasses so I looked in there - nothing. If your local police does take in lost property, why wouldn't you take it there? I will never know if it was ever posted on some random local "Found" FB page.

What the f are you going to do with a car key, that isn't a remote locking one and didn't even identify the make of car?

£280 later I now have a new key but never did find the old one.

IloveBanff · 24/04/2017 12:14

MyOtherNameIsTaken that is really bizarre! I can't understand why anyone wouldn't think that a woman is equally as likely to own a mobile phone as a man. Really really odd.

Having said that, I've never owned a mobile phone in my life, but I assume that the vast majority of people have one.

IloveBanff · 24/04/2017 12:17

I was very lucky a few years ago. I got a phone call from my bank saying that my credit card had been handed in, having been found on a bus. I didn't even know I'd lost it. The person left no details or I would have thanked them profusely for doing that.

Flip

1 2 3