What an aggravating couple of days I've had.

[WillowTheWhisp]

Prologue:

Back in the summer my eldest daughter went on a youth camp. She took her mobile phone with her as she was expecting an important call regarding a job she'd applied for. Overnight the phone disappeared, they all looked for it and couldn't find it. The leader said they'd have to go through everything in every tent next morning in the daylight but then the next morning it turned up just outside the tent on the floor! I just told her she was darned lucky and to be more careful in future.

The Recent Events:

On Tuesday she went carol singing with the same youth group and afterwards they went back to base for a bit of a sing and dance together. Busman, my OH, went to pick her up to come home and as she got into the car she realised her phone wasn't in her pocket. She went back into the building to look for it in case she'd dropped it when they were larking about. The leader even went all the way back to where they'd been singing in an old folks home to check if she'd dropped it there. Then she rang round other people who'd gone home before my daughter to ask if any of them had seen it and maybe picked it up.

I was thinking she'd lost it for good this time but then we got a phone call to say that one of the girls had taken it home and my daughter could collect it the next day. Great relief you'd think wouldn't you? So did we, until the next afternoon when she called round to the girl's house for it. The phone charm which had been attached had been cut off and all the photographs had been deleted. It then transpired that the girl had tried to tell her mother that it was her phone but the mother had known that she didn't have a phone like that and she was the one who had told the youth leader that her daughter had it.

It also looked like all the phone numbers in the address book had been deleted, but when my other daughter tried to phone it the phone didn't ring. I phoned 02 who confirmed my suspicions that the SIM card in the phone was not my daughter's SIM card. We then phoned the girl and asked her if we could please have the original SIM back as the number associated with it was important, it was known to everyone as my daughter's number - including work who may have wanted to contact her to ask her to come in when needed over the Christmas period. She denied having swapped the cards. She even said she had never taken ther back off the phone at which point I could hear her mother in the background calling her a liar and saying she'd seen her the previous evening take the back off the phone, take the SIM card out and put it back in again. That must have been when she swapped them.

The mother then spoke to me and I explained that we'd like the SIM back because of the associated phone number. As she was talking to me her phone went dead and we were cut off.

At this point I felt we had no alternative but to cancel the SIM card and ask for a replacement, so I phoned O2 again. Surprise, surprise - the credit on that SIM was down to just over £1! (It's a pay and go genie). Just as I was asking them to put a stop on it the mother walked in - she'd got the original SIM off her daughter. She was terribly upset that her daughter had taken the phone and tried to fool her that it was hers, then when asked to give it back had kept the SIM and lied about that too. I tried to stop O2 putting the stop on it but by then it was too late but the guy I spoke to said at least as we had the handset back we could put a temporary SIM in and use that until the replacement came. It would just mean a few days inconvenience without the original phone number (plus the loss of the credit which the girl had used whilst she'd had it). Or so we thought...

Next day we tried putting a different SIM in but it wouldn't activate. When I checked with O2 why this would be they asked me for the IMEI number of the phone and then told me that that handset had been reported stolen along with the switched SIM card on the Wednesday morning. (The day the girl had it before she handed it back to my daughter). A case of if she wasn't going to be able to keep it she was going to make sure we couldn't use it either. She'd told them it was her phone and given them the password to her SIM! How easy was that??!!!

So now we were stuck with an unuseable phone because the only person who could ask for the block to be lifted was the person who knew the password which was given when it was blocked (ie the theif).

Although a replacement SIM is on its way it would be useless in the original phone so today we've had to buy a new phone. When the girl was confronted with this she still insisted she had done nothing and hadn't even swapped the SIM cards despite the fact that her mother had found and returned to us the original SIM card which she denied having.

The mother, bless her, has offered to pay for the new phone but I wouldn't let her do that as it wasn't her who took it and she is mortified that her daughter did this. In fact she was in tears here in our house. I'm stunned that the girl would do this too because we've thought of her as a friend and trusted her and even invited her out with us. I just don't think I could look her in the face again after all the hassle this has caused, not to mention expense. The barefaced lies are the worst of it. She said she'd picked the phone up because she thought it was hers as she has one like that. Her mother says she has never had one like that and it would be hard to confuse even if she had because my daughters had a big dangly phone charm with her initial on it (which was given back to us but severed from the phone).

Today whilst we were buying the new phone the guy in the O2 shop said we should ring up and register the handset and SIM in my daughter's name once we got home. I thought we'd done that before because they'd taken a password from her and even asked for the password when we reported the theft. However, when we tried to do that we were told by O2 that the registering of SIM to handset takes place automatically when a new SIM is put into a phone and all the password relates to is the SIM. They have no procedure whereby you can safeguard the handset with a password. So in effect if the phone is stolen again all the theif has to do is put their SIM in and bingo the phone is automatically theirs!

Nice innit?

Meanwhile - refer back to the prologue and guess who my daughter was sharing a tent with on that camp? Maybe she'd had her eye on the phone ever since then and seized another opportunity when she thought it less likely that she would be discovered.

Anyway, warning to anyone on Pay As You Go with O2 - the only way to safeguard yourself against theft would seem to be insure the thing, don't trust to O2 passwords.

[Poppy]

That's awful I would have been tearing y hair. I do feel sorry for the girls other, sounds like her daughter is completely out of control

[WillowTheWhisp]

I feel sorry for the mother too. It must be awful to be lied to by your own daughter like that. She's a nice person and was so upset by the whole thing.

[grannyclaret]

Oh Willow that just went over my head ,,,you mean some girl pinched your daughters phone ,and caused mayhem.....
"some friend eh"

[WillowTheWhisp]

That's about it in a nutshell GrannyC. Daughter had to buy a new phone and it will be a few days before she gets her old number back. Inconvenience and expense we could have well done without.

[jaysay]

If I were your daughter I would make that little sod pay, as in there is more than one way to skin a cat, she should certainly be telling all immediate friends who are known to this other girl and shamming her, that is if she has the nerve to go anywhere near them again. it seems like your daughter has known this girl for ages which brings to mind the old adage "you don't **** on your own doorstep" but hey today nothings sacred. I'm sure like myself Willow when we were yong we would never have tried a stunt like that with friend.

[WillowTheWhisp]

Most immediate friends are aware of what happened because they were either there when the phone went missing on Tuesday or got a phone call asking if they'd seen it so they all found out one way or another that it was missing and then word got round how it was found and under what circumstances. A few have expressed astonishment that the girl would do something like that because they would have trusted her too. I told my daughter she may have lost a phone but the thief has lost something far more valuable and less easy to replace - her reputation.

[Sweetpea]

Hmm, I would be rather angry over something like that. I loath liar's. As for O2, I'm betting it's much the same with any provider.

Anyway, I hope you are sorted now and can have a peaceful Christmas.

[WillowTheWhisp]

We'll be fully sorted out after Christmas when the new SIM card comes through, can manage in the meanwhile with a temporary one.

[Kiki]

What an awful thing to happen! I dont possess a mobile phone. I just dont fancy one but realize they are use full.