To answer my own post:  just got call from rightful owner.  He was at the
Cingular store and called to say thanks.  He was not a neighbor but a
township employee - snowplow operator.  He had plowed my neighborhood during
NYC blizzard of Feb 12.  Phone must have been under huge snowbank for a week
or so, and surfaced as the snow melted.

Still don't understand why the store manager chose to handle it that way,
but I guess my paranoia boiled over at his attitude.  Probably also, I was
influenced by my own experience some years ago of recovering my own lost
phone simply by calling it.  (It was in my school's shuttle van.)  I figured
this was a sort of reverse case scenario.  Anyway, glad the owner got his
phone back.

Dont feel bad or what ever you feel ever since the local store manager
in my area told me that his PTT was faster than NEXTEL  ("which I had
for a brief period of time") and argued with him and than said lets
prove it, and he LOST and lost in his own store and packed easily 12 to
14 customers with every one watching and him mumbling that Nextel beat
his PTT,  since that evening when I go in there he will NOT come out of
his office or hides in the back.

The guy is actually cool and very knowledgeable just ran his MOUTH too
much and more or less had his face slapped and slapped good.

Manager kept phone because that's policy.
You found the phone took it to Cingular and that
should have been it.  How is the manager to know that you aren't just
trying to get a free phone out of this?

Perhaps Cingular tagged you as the "cell phone stalker," a deviant who
steals cell phones then uses Customer Service to lead him to his
victims' homes. Perhaps the computer noted that the phone's owner was
your ex-boyfriend who has a restraining order against you.

Personally I'd be rather annoyed if Cingular started sending total
strangers to my home. I'd much rather they act as a trusted agent to
relay the phone to me (as this manager did).

tg.

Which is what you should have done in the first place.

Which is exactly what he was supposed to do, and should do.

Why?  So you found a lost cell phone and returned it.  Why is it
absolutely imperative that the neighbor know it was you who returned it?

So if I find your car parked on the street, I guess that automatically
makes it mine?  Of course not, because the car has been registered by an
established authoritative body (the state DMV) that lists you as the
registered owner of the vehicle.  Even if you abandon the car for a
whole year, I still have no claim to the car whatsoever, and the car is
still under your ownership and your responsibility.

The phone you "found" did not belong to you, and you have no claim of
possession of it.  Unfortunately for you, "finders keepers" is not the
rule of the land in situations where ownership of property is documented
and traceable.  The IMEI of the phone is, similar to the car analogy,
registered in a database that allows Cingular to trace the phone back to
its owner, and that means the phone STILL belongs to its owner, even if
they appear to have abandoned it.

I would have refused, too!

You have to understand a few things.

First, the manager of the Cingular store is just as suspicious that YOU
won't close the loop as much as you *claim* to be that HE won't close
the loop.

Second, you've done your part.  Accept it!  You've returned the phone to
a place where any reasonable person would expect that efforts would be
made to return the property to its rightful owner.  The phone's IMEI is
registered to its owner, and presumably, if the owner was that concerned
about their phone, they could request that Cingular blacklist the
phone's IMEI so that no one else can use it UNTIL it is returned to them.

You also saw the manager make a reasonable effort to contact the owner.
That, I think, is proof enough that he wants to get phone and owner
reunited.  He has no reason to give YOU the owner's info.  In fact, he
has a separate obligation to protect the owner's privacy, and by
witholding the owner's information he was doing just that.  Besides, if
the manager is as unscrupulous as you think he is, then really, that's
between him and Cingular.

Third, if the phone's owner had insurance and he or she made a claim on
the phone and got a replacement, then technically it's no longer their
property.  Rather, the found phone now belongs to the insurance company,
and thus it's the obligation of the Cingular store manager to return the
phone to insurance company, NOT the owner.  YOU do not know the status
of that phone.  The Cingular manager does.  Therefore he is in the best
position to do what is right, NOT you.

And finally, your actions quite frankly smack of suspicious and ulterior
motives.  A truly good deed done doesn't require that any lavishing of
praise be bestowed upon the doer, and it appears that you're holding out
for some kind of special acknowledgement from the owner, or some kind of
reward.  Sometimes rewards are offered, and that's great!  In fact, if I
wanted something returned to me, *I* would offer a reward.  But, you are
not automatically *entitled* to that sort of thing, so you should not
expect anything of the kind.  And if you ARE expecting that sort of
thing, then maybe the world would have been better off if you left this
"found" phone exactly where you "found" it.

Or, for all I know (and for all the Cingular store manager knows) you
could be some creepy guy with an stalker's obsession towards this
person, and your "finding" of the phone was really a ruse to get this
person's personal info.  In which case, it's the Cingular store manager
who deserves the reward, not you.

   He