Originally posted by Leslie
Seems like the cell phone company would deactivate the phone from further use upon notification by the legitimate account holder. Or they can triangulate the position as to where the phone is if it's left on. To re-activate, don't the cell phone companies get any information stored on the phone, such as serial numbers and so on and so forth? Where's the bill of sale if questions arise? Seems like a phone call to the original owner from the cell phone company would clear things up if that was in question.
Why all the fuss and internet drama? Losing or having a cell phone stolen is serious business. The cell phone owner shouldn't have to deal with it past making a single phone call.
Les
For the time I worked there while in school, I never heard of an incident where they disabled a particular phone from working on the network because of it being reported stolen. The SIM card would just get disabled. After that, the theif could simply get another SIM for $20 and open an acct or put their own SIM in it if they already had an account.
They do have the IMEI (serial) number of the phone itself though, as it's recorded every time a phone makes a call from their network, so you would think they
could keep it from working on their network.
