Suspect a courier has stolen my phone

[maxwellhouseeye]

 My Xperia Z5 Compact started playing up a few weeks ago and I put in a repair order. I packaged it up and DPD sent a courier, nearly two weeks ago, to collect it. I wasn't in the house at the time but my dad was, and gave the courier the phone. He said the courier's little signature machine thing had been playing up.

Week and a half later, I get an e-mail from Sony saying they haven't received my phone. Called them up and they said it had been marked as a 'failed collection' - called DPD and they said the same thing. I don't have a collection receipt, and both companies said in that case they can't do anything.

I can understand where they're coming from. But surely DPD have some sort of internal process to stop couriers from taking items and then marking them as not received (otherwise it would be easy for them to just steal stuff, assuming the sender forgets to ask for a receipt/proof of collection)? Apparently it had been put down on their system that the courier had knocked on the door and no-one was in.

I'm not sure what to do now - I can't easily fork out the money for a new one and am gutted that there is no way either company can progress this or investigate it any further. Is there anything else I can do here or am I completely screwed?

[NeoBeum]

If you have the IMEI still, you could probably track it if it ever gets turned on

[maxwellhouseeye]

Thanks for the speedy reply. Will that work even if I've taken the SIM out?

[NeoBeum]

Did you activate the find my xperia thing Sony packaged with the phone?

The other way you might be able to track it is

https://security.google.com/settings/security/find-your-phone?continue=https%3A%2F%2Fmyaccount.googl...

edit: Your carrier should be able to track and lock the phone if you give them the IMEI - they can in australia, i dont really see it being different else where

edit#2: the carriers need to talk to each other to be able to track the phone once another sim gets put in it.

[maxwellhouseeye]

Using that link, it says my Z5 last synced on the 20th, which is way after it was given to the courier. Although I did remove all my accounts and wipe the phone before I sent it, so wouldn't it have to be connected to my Google account to come up like that? I'm a bit confused..!

[NeoBeum]

If a phone gets reset while it was tied to an active account - the next time the phone gets turned on and at first start up - it will ask for details of the original owner - Google then validates and gets logged.

You need to report this to the police btw.

Also, next time you should leave your phone with your account on it, an just put a PIN or password to prevent entry. I'm pretty sure  Sony would have a master code to be able to access the phone.

[maxwellhouseeye]

It said in their instructions to me to make sure I removed any PIN/pattern, otherwise they couldn't repair it. I will, although considering it was taken two weeks ago I'm not sure what they can do.

[Dr_zeus]

Exactly the same has happened to me, my Z3 picked up DPD, a week ago, guy ticked his pda and told my partner the machine recorded the transaction. I've given them 24 hours to come back with answer before I notify the police. I shall be using twitter to get point across.

i do not lose my hard earned belongings to a dodgy courier company.