If Your Cell Phone Is Stolen

So we left our cell phone in a movie theater a few weeks back (we didn't figure this out until much later). The next day we left for a trip and figured we'd look around the house some more when we came back. A week later we returned and I checked the call logs online hoping the last call we made might give a clue as to where it was. I was shock to see hundreds of dollars in calls to Haiti. Luckily, it looks like the battery died and the thief gave up after a day (it was a RAZR - guys, how hard is it to find a charger?). And of course I get the runaround from T-Mobile placing the responsibility for the fradulent calls on me, since we hadn't reported the phone stolen. Here's my gripe - if my credit card company can freeze my card and call me after one suspicious transaction, how can my wireless carrier not recognize dozens of calls to Haiti, a place I've never called? That's a serious lack of consumer protection. So I found this great Yahoo Finance article and filed reports with our state utility commission, the state attorney general and the FTC. I got call from T-Mobile a week later saying they had been contacted by the FTC and would credit the charges if I faxed them the police report (which I had). Here's the easy prevention: enable the PIN code on your phone so only you can access it.

What to do in case your cell phone is stolen