Finding lost property. What would you do ?

[eldersis]

Am I paranoid or sensible ?

I went to a lidl's supermarket last night. When I went to get a trolley it had a smart phone and a wallet in the bottom .It was very busy and the person must only have been gone a few minutes. I first thought to check the phone and call someone listed but thought it better to take it into the store and hand it in.

The first store member I spoke to asked for them and said they would give it to the manager. I woudnt hand them over to her and asked to speak to security. The manager arrived and asked for them, I asked for a receipt to say I had handed them in and he wasn't happy. He said it wasn't necessary and he would put them in the safe. I said if he didnt give me a receipt I would take them to a police station myself.

I eventually was given a scrap of receipt paper with only my first name (my surname is difficult so I can accept that) date and that the two items were given to the manager.

All I could think was that cctv would show me finding them ! Handing them over without proof could put me in a very difficult position.

I really wish I had phoned someone on the persons phone contacts and arranged for them to recover it from me. I can't believe trying to do the right thing is so problematic.

What would YOU do?
I hope the person retraces their steps and gets their stuff back but I will never know, hence the worry.

I would have handed them in and not thought much more about it.

I would have just handed them in!

Why were you being weird about it??? Why did you need proof you'd handed it in??????

LOL Yes I thought I may be being wierd about it, I tend to over think . Exactly why I asked for opinions.

I handed a roll of notes in at Asda a few Xmass ago, around £120. I gave them my name, address and telephone number. I asked what happened to found property and they said it goes to Police after 28days. Anyway after Xmas, mid January I'm pretty broke and I think it's worth asking, so I chase it up and they say the manager has put it in the Xmas charity collection! I was dumbfounded. It wasn't even 28 days but manager said money was different. I thought this was outrageous. When I said this wasn't on he said if I wanted the money for myself I should have kept it! I didn't want it for myself, I wanted it returning to its rightful owner. I was imagining some poor sod going to pay for their Xmas shopping and having a mega panic. I feel I should have been next in line. I asked if there was a receipt. I still think he stole it. I find it incredulous that someone didn't ask for it.

Another time I found 4 bicycles on my frond lawn. Annoyingly the Police asked me to bring them to the station. 28 days later I was offered them. I declined!

You did the right thing handing the phone and wallet in. I'm sure it will go back to its rightful owner! I'd have done the same. When I find lost property I hand it in to the nearest shop or police station. The times I do worry is when it's a child's teddy/toy/comforter as I can't settle thinking they might not settle that night if they don't get have in their wee hands to settle them or in moments they are upset. Goes straight for the heartstrings!

I just hand it in as stores have their own policies on what they do

No you didn't need to complicate it

Not quite the same, but have had post/parcels delivered to my address that were clearly for another property on the same street. I on more than three occasions have had to trace the owners, despite having small children and having to climb numerous stairs to find the right door... it's hassle but with these kind of things, I try to do the right thing.

Thank you for that it makes me a little less paranoid. I will contact lidl head office tomorrow to ask about procedures. I could not afford to replace my phone if I lost it and so might the person whose items i found.

I REALLY wish I had just gone through the phone and contacted a relative/friend to speak to the person directly.

What exactly did you want a 'receipt' for?

As a store manager (different chain), we see a lot of phones/wallets/cash handed in. Phones and wallets/purses/bags automatically go to a locked office or safe. I’ll personally choose to see if I can find any contact details via Facebook or answer the phone if it rings to help trace the owner and reunite the items. Cash is harder to prove (often cannot see on cctv if it’s been dropped). It will often get sent to our head office/away with our banking and recorded as cash found but not collected.

Unless you want to spend the time trying to reunite the items to the person who’s lost them, you should trust store staff to do the right thing. A receipt given for handing over lost property seems utterly bizarre and unnecessary.

I would have just handed it to the first store colleague who was free.

Most phones will be locked so you can’t go through them.

I would have just handed it to staff and not given it this much thought!

YABU as you're essentially saying you don't trust the staff members not to be thieves as why else would t you just hand it in and trust them to follow their policy regarding lost property?

I work in a supermarket and have worked on the customer service desk and we have so many things handed in on a daily basis - money, debit cards, purses/wallets, handbags, clothing, walking sticks etc - and we have a policy to deal with things. Eg if a debit card gets handed in we can use our tannoy system to announce the person's name and ask them to come to the CSD in case they're still in the store; if there's a phone handed in we will usually check if there is an emergency contact listed (even if the phone is locked many phones have a way for you to lost an emergency number that is accessible to call even from the lock screen) to call, or put it on the back of the desk - visible to CCTV but out of reach of any customers - for 20/30 mins to see if anyone calls it before we lock it away properly (we lock lost stuff in a cupboard at the CSD for the rest of the day and then anything high value is put in the safe in the cash office until collected)

We have also had people want to report things they have found but refused to hand them over and left their name/number with us for the owner to contact. The problem with that is then, when the owner comes back to ask if their item has been handed in as this is the last place they remember having their item, they have to get hold of the finder and arrange a convenient time/place for them to collect their item. The finder thinks they're doing the person a favour by keeping their item safe, when in actual fact they make the person's life more difficult by adding an extra layer of admin to the person getting their stuff back, plus you then have people worrying about going to some random persons house alone to collect their property which is a safety concern for a lot of people.

Not only that but if there is any damage/anything is missing then the finder is actually putting themselves in a vulnerable position as they can't prove they didn't take the missing thing or do the damage whereas store staff can as we are under CCTV and can show we were handed an item, recorded it in our lost property book, locked it away and then had no other contact until the owner returned to claim it.

The best thing to do is hand stuff in to store staff but ask to take a photo of the items first (eg the phone with its lock screen visible; keys with a distinctive keyring turned over or out of shot so that the owner will be able to identify it but nobody else can describe it perfectly; purse and then add the owners initials from the bank cards inside in the description so the owner can take ID or confirm their details/contents to collect the item) and then say you're going to post it on local FB groups, saying they were found and handed in to X supermarket security/customer service at Y time on Z date. That way you maximize the chance the person sees, or is informed of, where their item is and you have a 'paper trail' to show chain of custody in case you're worried.

We found an iPhone recently. It was locked. About 30 minutes late it rang. Answered,"hello,guess you found a phone". Had actually seen the lady a while before,both walking out dogs in a park. She was lovely. majority of folk I told said they would have kept it. Never entered my mind.

I would have looked in the wallet for a drivers licence or staff ID - something with an address on.

Shops usually destroy bank cards after a week or so, I discovered when I collected mine from a supermarket just before they shredded it. It's put me off handing things in to shops!

I would just have handed it to a member of staff and thought no more of it.

Legally stores don't have to keep your items at all, we could just throw them in the nearest bin, would you prefer that?

Or is it better that we keep items for a set amount of time to allow people to claim them back (most people block their card as soon as they notice that it's missing anyway) before securely disposing of them?

The store I work at keeps bank cards/wallets/purses for 30 days before they're securely destroyed and you'd be surprised at just how many items we can be securely storing for people at any one time, we can't keep things indefinitely so there are set policies to follow.

Was just going to say this very thing. Mine is password protected, you can't go through my contacts or look at my Facebook!

With a phone I probably would have kept it and waited for them to ring.

If I had to hand it in, I would, but I'd be 50:50 about whether they would just steal it or not. No particular reason to trust them. At least I know I wouldn't steal it! If I handed it in I would also post on fb local group without identifying information about the items.

If it was an independent cafe for example I'd be more trusting of the staff.

I would have held on to it and then, when I'd returned home I'd have taken to Twitter and to Facebook and posted that I was in X store in Y location and found <insert list of missing items here>. Will return to owner once they can accurately describe a card in the wallet or name on the card or amount of cash in the wallet (that kind of thing).

Then add a few hashtags so that if someone is searching for it they can search on the hashtag.

If you don't want to hold on to it, you could say that you've handed it in to Z police station for collection by the owner.

You have a very low opinion of shop staff, you clearly think they are all thieves. Hence you not handing the phone to anyone other than manager and demanding a receipt!

You probably need an attitude adjustment, not everyone is dishonest and your behaviour is weird. Really weird.

If you are so distrustful then you could have tracked down the owner yourself or taken it to the police.

But to be frank your post is coming across as look how good I am. I hand lost property in . Did you look for a name and address in the wallet?

Great reply! I think you made it harder than it needed to be OP!

Pretty weird that you refused to hand it over to the first member of staff you spoke with.

Insisting on speaking to a manager/security/getting a “receipt” is OTT and making a big fuss about nothing.

If it was an independent cafe for example I'd be more trusting of the staff.

Why though?

I work in both a supermarket as well as an independent cafe, why am more trustworthy when I'm working in the cafe than when I'm working in the supermarket?

I have way more policies and processes to follow in the supermarket than in the cafe - I'm always under CCTV, there are random searches as we leave the premises and I am never working alone in the supermarket ... In the cafe I am often working alone, I have frequent reasons to go "out the back" away from CCTV and have no bag/locker searches ... If I was going to steal anything from a customer it would be 1000% easier to do it in the cafe than the supermarket