I would assume the reason she was trying to bring it to my house, vs saying “Hey I work downtown, tell me when you want to meet me.”, is because she is fishing for a reward. Yeah I know in doperland nobody takes rewards for these things, and any decent person would be offended by the suggestion. But most people don’t live in doperland. And if I had any doubts about the person (and any stranger would fall in that category) then I’d just go pick it up right away. Maybe I’m just jaded by city living.
Except, the OP wasn’t complaining at all. She stated the facts (person promised wallet back tonight, didn’t show up) and asked if we felt it would be okay if she gave her another call to see when she would be coming. Monstro even mentioned she didn’t want her phone call to interrupt the person’s Sunday schedule and she didn’t want to appear rude or pushy. That’s not complaining. She simply asking for what we, the dopers, feel is protocol/polite in this situation.
Now, if she had written a post about how this bitch promised her wallet and didn’t show up or if she told us about a series of increasingly passive aggressive series of phone calls (from Monstro), that would be different).
At the time of your first post (where you called her a complainer), there had been exactly one conversation between Monstro and the other person. Other person said she would be there tonight, other person didn’t show up, Monstro made post explaining details, laying out facts, asking for advice…not complaning.
Whoops, thought you were the one saying she should have scraped together fiver dollars.
Anyway, I’m just not sure she was a good Samaritan myself. She has access to the OP’s banking information and now the OP is going to go on without canceling her cards. That’s just really creepy to me.
If I were the Good Samaritan, I think I would have just given the wallet to the police.
OR, she’s posting on another doper like message board about how she just found a wallet and everyone is screaming “OMG don’t let her come to your house, you have to take it to her place…and bring a friend. If she sees where you live, she’ll steal your money and your identity and murder you and burn your puppies…and call the police before you go, can’t be to safe. Also wear a helmet, just in case.”
Enh, it depends. I had an account in Virginia where I used nothing but the ATM card. Used it every day, for everything. And I got a call one day in the middle of work from the bank, asking me how it was possible that I’d purchased gas in Canada an hour after I’d purchased breakfast in Norfolk. The answer was obvious, and they cancelled immediately. To be fair, they cancelled BEFORE they called me; if I’d gone to lunch, I’d have noticed and called them, instead.
So…SOMEthing keeps an eye on stuff, even if it’s only in extreme and obvious cases.
The suggestion from several Dopers to cancel your cards right now is a good one but does not go far enough. Contact the major credit reporting companies and place a free 90-day freeze on your credit. Since she had more than enough information about you she could attempt to establish credit under your name. Putting a on 90-day freeze on your credit flags any attempt by anyone to take out credit in your name, including yourself.
I’ve been on the other end of this a couple of times and it’s pretty shocking how people behave when you are doing them what amounts to a big favor.
I found a wallet tossed through my gate. No cash, but ID, credit cards, library card, school ID, loads of membership cards, photos and the like. I track down the guy and first thing out of his mouth is not “thank you for going to the trouble of finding me so I don’t have to spend the next month replacing the 40 or so items in my wallet” but “I’VE CANCELLED ALL MY CREDIT CARDS”. OK, good for you. Would you like the physical wallet and the rest of its contents back? You can come to my office and pick it up or I can mail it to you. “I’VE CALLED THE POLICE. I WANT YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS. WHERE DO YOU LIVE?”. That’s nice, but that wasn’t one of the two choices I offered you, and I’m not planning on dealing with cops coming to my door. I can leave it in a padded envelope with your name on it at reception and you can pick it up any day this week between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm, or I can mail it to the address on your license. “I DON’T LIVE THERE AND I CANCELLED ALL MY CREDIT CARDS”. No problem, since I wasn’t planning on using them. Would you like to pick it up at my office or would you prefer to give me an address where you would you like it sent? “THE POLICE ARE GOING TO ARREST YOU FOR KEEPING STOLEN PROPERTY”. Enough already.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. A transaction like that is one of the many things that trigger a red flag. The computers are always keeping an eye on your accounts, always. But you can’t call and ask a human to do it. For example, you couldn’t call up and say “I think I may have lost a book of checks in Seattle, if anyone tries to cash a check in Seattle, don’t let it go through” But yes, the computers are always there and the algorithms they use do a pretty good job, though they tend to get kind of trigger happy around Christmas time as people tend to use their credit cards for non-traditional purchases.
Little paranoid are we.
I don’t do well with those kind of people
My answer would have been
“Sir…Sir you need to calm down. Look, I’d be happy to mail it to you (at this point, I’d not be telling him where to find me) or I can throw it away, it’s up to you”
“I ALREADY CANCELED MY CARDS”
“I know, you already said that three times, you need to stop yelling at me, do you want the actual wallet and all the other cards back, I can drop it in the mail for you”
“I’M CALLING THE COPS, WHERE ARE YOU, THEY’RE GOING TO ARREST YOU”
“No they’re not, stop yelling”
“Tell you what, I’ll swing my the police station later and leave it for them, you can talk to them to get it back”
“WHERE ARE YOU, I’M GO—”
“I’m just gonna toss it in the garbage, click”
The thread title alone sounds like a complaint…“hurry the hell up”.
And my first post in this thread was this morning, well after she got her wallet back from the samaritan.
The OP should be happy that someone found her wallet and she was getting it back.
My, we’re a cynical lot.
#1) I doubt many identity thieves would give out their cell phone numbers to the folks they are going to defraud. Or are we to believe that this person has a dummy cell phone just in case she comes across a wallet on the ground?
#2) Once the wallet was found, the lady could have easily gone on a spending spree using the credit cards. Even if the store asked for i.d. she had a driver’s license – in short, everything she needed to steal with very little chance of being caught. She didn’t.
#3) The money that the OPer didn’t even recall putting into the wallet, was returned intact.
Sorry, but none of the GS’s behavior causes my creepometer to ding. I think what happened is exactly what the OPer wrote, and that someone found the wallet next to a car, wrote a note, and then returned it at her first convenience. PERHAPS she was hoping for a reward for all her trouble, but I think that is the extent of it.
If the OPer wants to go to the time and trouble to set up credit monitoring in case the GS decides to steal her identity, then so be it. But I think she’ll find that the GS was just that.
My post was in response to Wilbo, not you.
I was thinking the same thing. Sure there are dumb thieves out there, but not so dumb as to inconvenience themselves by returning the wallet while also providing the OP with the means to identify and track them down if shenanigans cropped up later on.
Why would it be any harder to acquire the phone the same way she might have acquired the wallet?
What is the likelihood that a thief in possession of a lost or stolen phone randomly stumbles upon another lost item in the middle of the street–this time a wallet–and leaves a note with the number to the stolen/lost phone so that she can be reached? Compound this likelihood with the implausibility of a thief returning a wallet (cash intact, mind you) instead of stringing the OP along for a few more days and then tossing the thing into the bushes off 197 somewhere, and you get pretty low odds.
I mean, I’m not saying that the OP shouldn’t keep an eye on her accounts and it probably would be smart to cancel the cards to be on the safe side, but nothing in her account suggests that the good samaritan wasn’t on the up and up.
What is the likelihood that a person who has stolen a wallet couldn’t do something even easier like steal a phone, forestall the canceling of the cards with the nice note, copy off all the original info needed from the wallet then return it, knowing that by doing so the cards probably won’t get canceled or the bank account closed. When the scam is worked this way(and yes, it does happen exactly this way), the major credit runs may not happen for a while, but an occasional charge for a candy bar or a drink will be made just to make sure the cards are still good.
That’s a nice headline and all, but the woman repeatedly refused to hand over the wallet to police. I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here.
And would a scam artist delay calling the owner back, thus increasing the likelihood of him canceling the credit cards?
Plus, she drove over to his house, presumably with a car that has a traceable license plate, and she met the OPer face to face.
I know we hear of scams everyday, but at some point we have to quit looking for ill intent in every corner.
PunditLisa, I didn’t have any cash, besides a jar full of coins, in the house. I bought my fast food meal with mostly coinage, believe it or not (to the cashier’s amusement). I’m one of these crazy people that deal mostly in electronic currency, not the foldable stuff.
I felt bad for not having any money, but I didn’t know what else to do. What would you have done? I gave her what I thought would be nice (one of my flower pots and a beeswax candle in a decoupaged Altoid tin).
I guess I could have given her some crackers and applesauce. But then she would have looked at me strange.
By the way, I don’t know what money she was talking about. There was no money in the wallet–unless she either took it (which would be dumb) or was referring to my ATM card. Maybe she just assumed there was cash in it without looking. I dunno.
I haven’t canceled anything yet, just because it is a hassle (having to go back and change my paypal account and all my automatic billing accounts is no fun :(). But I’ll do it, if ya’ll think it’s prudent. I was just going to give the lady the benefit of the doubt, but I guess I can’t afford to be so trusting.
And I guess I forgot to mention that when I initially did call her, I asked if I could meet her somewhere and she told me not to worry about it since she “lived on the other side of town”. In Richmond, that’s vernacular for “right across the river”, but people act like that a million miles away. So I wasn’t totally an ass, though maybe I could have insisted harder (but food was primarily on my mind at the moment). Admittedly, I was an ass on the second day by waiting and waiting and not calling to remind her that I could get it myself. After I did, she came. So maybe she didn’t want me to know where she lived.