I now have all the papers (pre-paid mailing label, receipt to be stamped by the postal employee, etc.) to send back the mystery iPhone that I received early Friday morning. In the interest of full disclosure, and to help any of you who have e-mail accounts (who doesn't nowadays?), let me say that I've had the papers from the iPhone seller since Friday morning. I just didn't know it.
For some reason, all the e-mails from the vendor went into my spam folder (Orange.fr calls it les indésirables). It was Walt who had the brilliant idea to ask yesterday if I had checked there, and I hadn't. I hadn't looked inside a spam folder in several years, in fact. So that part of the mystery is solved.
I still don't know why the iPhone was sent to me, and there still has been no sign of suspicious activity on my French or American bank accounts. Now I will send it back. And I will delete my account with the company that shipped it to me.
Meanwhile, we had a gorgeous day yesterday. The temperature on our front deck (or terrasse) was 22ºC (over 70ºF) in the afternoon. It's time to put the table and chairs back out there for the summer season. As Walt stepped out there right after lunch, our neighbor the mayor and her husband were walking by. We talked to them for a few minutes, enjoying the sun on our shoulders.
Included here are a few photos from over the weekend. The plants and flowers are not unusual (cowslips, or coucous, and a collard plant), but I like these shots. I'm doing tests with the different cameras I have, and since we're having a few sunny mornings right now I'm enjoying taking pictures. As always, click or tap on the images to enlarge them.
When talking -on Skype- to a friend in the UK yesterday about your uninvited phone, her first thoughts were that the phone was a dummy and it was to confirm all the details of you.
ReplyDeleteOh! She also said change your Credit card .
ReplyDeleteThere has been no activity on the credit cards, and I don't see anywhere on the vendor's web site where credit card numbers are stored. The company that sent the phone is reputable and quite well known in France and around Europe. I've been a client of the company since 2004.
DeleteAny explanation from the sender why the phone was sent to you in the first place?
ReplyDeleteNot really. The man I talked to on Friday said somebody had been able to get into my account (espace personnel) and place the order. But if that happened, the intruder paid with his or her own credit card, not mine. I'm still waiting and keeping an eye on my credit card accounts to see if any unexpected charge comes through. So far so good.
DeleteThis is stranger than fiction. Why would somebody get into your account to buy an iPhone with his/her own credit card to have it sent to himself/herself —or somebody else—, but send it to you instead? Ya du poisson là-dedans... That sounds fishy to me!
DeleteP.S. I would proceed with extreme caution. I would not hurry to send the phone back until you know for sure that it wasn't really meant to be for you. Some generous person —unknown so far— who tried a poisson d'avril on you? Le poisson d'avril works in both cultures, so wait and see. You were the "unvoluntary" recipient; you didn't steal it. It is to the sender to show without doubt that is was sent in error if it really was, not to you. I don't know how it is in France, but in the US possession is 9 points of the law.
DeleteCould it be Mr. Cook as a belated parting gift?
Mr. Cook was not even a gleam in Apple's eye, as far as I know, when I was laid off by Apple and Jobs 18 years ago. I have two weeks to return the iPhone, though since I didn't pay for it I'm not sure what liability I might face if I didn't return it on time. Anyway, I was going to send it back tomorrow, but maybe I'll wait another few days.
DeleteKen, I'm still holding out hope that a generous friend had wanted to surprise you.
ReplyDeleteSorry, it's not me.
Usually a scammer will try a small charge to your credit card to see if that goes through. My brother's credit card company caught suspicious activity a few weeks ago (a $3-4 charge was made in Las Vegas while we were in Charleston). They canceled his card and were sending him a new one.
It is fishy like CHM said;-) an expensive poisson d'Avril. You will probably never know how it happened. Glad you checked your spam folder.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, that even if someone had wanted to "gift" you the phone, that's only a fraction of the cost of using it. You'd still have to pay a big monthly fee for data (to use it online) and phone service. In the U.S., Apple makes it, now, that you have to lease the phone, paying a certain price per month. If, in fact, you come in with a phone already purchased outright, your monthly package for data and phone will probably be MORE expensive, because they give you a "deal" if you bundle the lease of the phone with the monthly data/phone services. To give you an example... a friend of mine now owns an unwanted $300 Apple watch. Why? Because, he didn't want to lease his phone, so he bought it outright, before going to the Apple store to start a data & phone plan. They explained all of the plan pricing possibilities to him, without leasing, and, because he was missing out on the "deal" they say they give you for leasing, it was going to cost him significantly more per month! They figured out that, if he were to spend $300 on something in the store that day, they could give him the "great deal" on the monthly data/phone plan. So, he bought himself an Apple watch for $300.
ReplyDeleteCrazy.
On top of it, he was thinking that the watch would work out, because, when he goes running, he wouldn't have to bring his bulky phone, because he could use his Apple watch for all of the things that the phone does. Wrong! The Apple phone works through a blue-tooth connection to one's phone! If the phone is not there in your pocket (or close by), the Apple watch doesn't have any of the data/phoning functionality.
Nuts.
I think that something just got screwed up in their system, and someone there just printed out the wrong address sticker. (I thought for a moment, when you mentioned running into your neighbors, that you were going to tell us that you found out that they were the ones expecting a phone delivery! LOL)
Yes, nuts. We have to check our assumptions at every turn. As CHM says: Pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué ? That's today's world.
DeleteGood luck; hope this is the last you've heard of this weird escapade. I'd still be worried that someone had stolen my identity in a way that I couldn't see.
ReplyDeleteA few weeks ago, gmail saw fit to put all of my incoming mail into the spam folder.
I am still worried about identity theft in light of all this.
DeleteAs for spam, something similar obviously happened with Orange e-mail. By the way, I also found a lot of messages from amazon.fr in my gmail spam folder. Don't know why.
I'm glad the mystery is sort-of solved, but agree with others that perhaps don't send it back quite so soon. Wait a bit, give it another few days, even a week.
ReplyDeleteAnd as ever the French have the excellent term: les indésirables, indeed.
I have decided to wait another week or so. I was going to send the iPhone back this morning, because I have to go out anyway, but I've changed my mind. Meanwhile, I'm going to write to the company that sent me the phone and ask them what their take on all this is. Maybe they can explain to me how the iPhone ended up coming to me when I hadn't ordered or paid for it. My holding the phone hostage might motivate them to figure it out.
Delete