Mobile : Stolen, Lost or Missing?

Have you ever lost a pricey mobile phone? How difficult was it to claim insurance on such an electronic gadget? Did you get the First Investigation Report (FIR) from police without much hassle? Here is a guest post by Sanjay, my colleague. He narrates the story of his lost N97 mobile and a series of Monday morning blues which continued to haunt him for rest of the day… or probably for rest of the week!

Very much inline with the Monday mornings, I woke up a bit late and managed to reach bike servicing centre as it was due. Folks out there said it will take 2 days for servicing. After leaving my bike there for service, came to BMTC bus stop at Koromangala Canara Bank. I had my backpack one side and in the other hand I was carrying a helmet. As I waited for the bus, especially for the Volvo, my hands were full and was not in a position to stand through an ordinary crowded bus. After 10 minutes of wait, I saw route # 201R volvo bus which gave me little relief but not for long! Though I could feel that it was a moderately crowded bus, was in no mood to wait for some more time and hence got into this bus around 10.25 am. Found a corner place and kept my bag and helmet on top of it. For that too, I had to struggle much in that crowded bus. I think this is the time when someone smartly pick-pocketed my Nokia N97 mobile.

Anyway I couldn’t notice something of this sort happened until the bus reached EGL stop. I took my bag, helmet and as usual as per my habit checked for my mobile in the pocket. Oh my god, I didn’t get any feel of having it in my pocket. I checked my backpack just to be sure  in case I may have put in there. I saw my wallet in the bag but not my N97. I immediately checked around in bus where I was standing with the thought that I might have dropped it. Sadly, stars weren’t in my favor and couldn’t find it anywhere.

From that point till I reached the office reception, my mind went through each and every activity of that day many a times to get a clue on whether it was pick-pocketed or I dropped it. Anyways, I decided to call my mobile from reception and found it to be in not reachable mode already. Thus it was sure for now that it is stolen. Realizing the reality, called my brother and explained him the story, asked for suggestion on what to do. At one point I was very sad to lose my mobile where on other side I was happy by myself on buying a mobile with ‘Theft Insurance’ which was by default added with any mobile purchases at ‘Sangeetha mobiles’. I then contacted insurance office and asked if pickpocket is covered and got a YES, I was so happy to hear that it is covered. Then asked the process to claim and they said they want some form to download from Sangeetha mobiles website which has few forms to be printed, fill them up and submit to insurance office. Other than this we had to get an FIR from Police, mobile bill, id proof and acknowledgement from network provider mentioning that the number is blocked within 24 hours from the incident.

It was already 1 pm in the afternoon and had to finish all the documentation work and most importantly to get an FIR. Phew… don’t want to talk about the story of getting an FIR, I get so tense about the whole process. Since pick-pocketing would have happened near ‘sony world junction in Koramangala’, my brother suggested to go to Koramangala police station. I went there and talked to our law protectors there and told the whole story including an explanation to all their silly doubts. It took atleast 15 min to explain them the situation and finally they said that since the mobile theft was realized at EGL bus stop, needs to be handled by HAL police station which comes under HAL police station limits and hence told me to go there. This was just a starter to get pissed off.

Without much options, I had no choice than going to HAL police station and spent the same amount of time to explain the story to another bunch of new police folks. OMG! After story is narrated, they asked to go to Airport police station as EGL comes under its limits. Again got pissed off and started searching for Airport Police station, it took more than 45 mins to find this police station in rain, as it was in small place near old airport but very inside and unreachable location. Finally this police station was the last station to visit to get an FIR but there was no end to my frustration yet as they rejected to file FIR for a case of mobile pick-pocketing. But after they came to know about the price of N97, they were willing to register an FIR with some twist and you can guess what it was.

Wrote the whole story in an application with the subject as ‘Filing FIR’, which they immediately rejected and told me to write a new one removing FIR word. I wrote another application without FIR and wrote ‘Stolen’ word as I had to prove that Mobile was stolen for Insurance purpose. They rejected this one too suggesting to remove the word ‘stolen’ and include ‘missing’ instead. Phew… I was totally pissed off! I told him that I have to file for insurance and how can I write missing? But they had their evil grin before assuring me not to worry and will get insurance as this kind of cases come very frequent. Anyway I gave them the application and got an FIR. Time was already 5pm by them. Came back office, collected my bag and went to Vodafone care center for collecting new SIM and old SIM blocked acknowledgement. I called up the Insurance guys at Sangeetha and asked them if i can come to submit the document, but they said office time is only from 10 AM to 3 PM and it was not possible on that day. That bought curtains to a special ‘monday’

Here is a bit of information I missed to mention earlier. According to Insurance company if theft is claimed within one month to 6 month of purchase date, company will reimburse 75% of amount otherwise 50 % of it. The good new was I had lost my mobile on the 171th day of purchase i.e., well within 6th month of purchase.