Last week I left my iPhone in a cab. I had it back less than 24 hours later.
This was lucky, and thanks to several kind and generous people.
Still, due to the experience, I can offer some three tips in case you are ever in New York and you drink two martinis and a glass of wine at dinner and make the same stupid mistake.
Always get a receipt from your taxi driver and hang on to it.
After I realizing that I lost my phone, I ran back to the corner where I was dropped off and began trying to fish my receipt out of a trash can.
I couldn't get at it. New York City has its trash cans closed up in these big green cages and the receipt was way down inside out of my reach. I started to tip the whole thing over to try and reach the receipt from a new angle when – thank God – a homeless man walked over and said, "you're doing it wrong!" Then he popped open a side door that I hadn't seen and pulled the can out onto the sidewalk.
Call 311.
The whole reason you want to hang onto your receipt is so when you call 311, you can tell the operator your taxi's medallion number. The 311 operator will then give you another number to call to reach a dispatcher that can talk to the driver.
When I finally go the dispatcher on the phone, she said she would contact the driver and call me back if he found my phone. Wonderfully, he did the next day. He even offered to drop the phone off anywhere in the city if I paid the fare.
Don't be a dummy like me. Turn Apple's Find My Phone feature on.
Apple has this feature you can turn on called Find My Phone. It allows you to locate your phone from any Web browser. Handy, right? Too bad I had it turned off for some dumb reason. Don't do that.
