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Wefoundit

Pandoras Twist

Has anyone had any experience of this site? I lost my student diary in the library a few weeks ago (90% sure it was the library anyway) and checked all the lost and found boxes etc etc.

Then today I get a Facebook message saying

"wefoundit help reunite UCD students with their lost stuff. We found a Student Planner Diary belonging to you. If you'd like to retrieve it, log onto our website and register under 'lost something'!
Thanks
The wefoundit team"

How they knew it was me I don't know.

So I registered onto the site to get it back, and get an email asking me to come to their offices in Finglas and pay a 5er to get it back.

WTF?

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delta_bravo

Its your property, I dont see why you should pay for it back. Like if it was your ipod and they were looking for €10 to get it back I would probably pass on the info to the gardai.

Looking at their facebook site they appear to get lost and found stuff from nightclubs and pubs and give them back to the owners by probably searching through facebook etc.

Heres an article about them. I dont see how a private company can levy a fee for your own property. They seem to hire people called "seekers" to catalogue and record lost items and bring them to their offices in Finglas. I doubt UCD would be happy to know a private company were making money out of lost and found items on campus.

Chet T16

The fan, sh!t should be hitting it

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Take all the info to the Gardai.

jimi_t2

I was wondering where the crack team behind westoleit.ie went

parker kent

Wow, just wow! Thieves are getting into the Web 2.0 age.

Although I do see how it could be helpful if they can reunite people with stuff they would otherwise not have found. Although it is ripe for extreme misuse. Particularly if "seekers" are finding stuff just before the actual owner went to re-trace their steps.

delta_bravo

Like I wonder what happens if you go to their office and simply refuse to pay. They cannot withold your items or else it would be theft

Pandoras Twist

Well Dublin bus charge you 2 euro to get stuff from their lost and found

Raphael

So having done some research(it's amazing what 5 minutes and google can do), it seems this crowd work thusly: They partner with a company who have a lost and found, such as UCD Services. Their partner then passes off responsibility for operating the lost and found to this crowd - in the case of UCD, stuff gets passed to them if unclaimed for 2 weeks. They then attempt to track down the owner, and levy a charge for doing so.

Now, seeing as you've left your shit in the companies location, they're totally justified in charging you to return it (Like Dublin bus do. Seeing as how they pass it all on in a transparent and above board way to wefoundit, It follows wefoundit are justified in charging. Especially since they actively track people down, and there's apparently a 2 week grace period, at least with UCD, before stuff gets handed off. So if people are actually going to services and asking about it, they should find it first.

Edit: Although that said, I may never hand anything to services again if I find it on campus. Would rather try and track the owner down myself and not charge them a fiver.

jimi_t2

Apparently they are an official company tendered by UCD Buildings and Services to ''manage'' lost property.

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2056094078

mcgenius

Yoiks...! Let me start off by 'fessing up: I'm the MD of wefoundit, and I stumbled across this thread so figured I should probably put in my two cents worth! I'm delighted that we managed to find Pandoras Twist but sorry that what we do wasn't made clear when we got in touch.

Let me give you a little background - I set up wefoundit a few months ago after sitting in a car hire office and watching a few very busy staff do an excellent job of renting plenty of cars. However, as I was waiting I noticed in the corner of their office 2-3 boxes overflowing with lost property. When I asked what they did with all the stuff found in the returned rental cars it became apparent that there was no system in place to handle it and no-one with time enough to chase up the owners. In the box were items that I knew the owners would WANT to get back but that they may not have realised where they had lost it. Or worse - they had called and the company was too busy doing what they do best (ie renting cars) to stop and help them get their stuff back.

So I figured - what would I want to happen if my important stuff were in that box? Would I want the company to move heaven and earth to reunite me with it - definitely! But they're so focussed on renting cars (or whatever) that this non-core part of their business was just falling by the wayside which results in a poor customer service experience and a never-to-be-reclaimed item.

Which is where wefoundit comes in. We help manage lost property for (among others) nightclubs, hotels, bus companies and colleges - and we go to work trying to actively reunite the owners of lost items with their valuable stuff. We have a call centre (1890 FOUNDIT) and a website (www.wefoundit.ie) where people can log their lost property queries and ask us to help find their stuff. Our Seekers also take things one step further - if we can find any detail on the owner we'll do whatever we can to trace them and let them know 'wefoundit'.

Since we opened in July 2010 we've reunited hundreds of people - and plenty of UCD students! - with their lost stuff and so far the reaction has been incredibly positive. We love doing what we do and we'll do whatever we can to get your lost stuff back to you (even if it does mean a random message via Facebook!).

Is it legal? Are we entitled to charge for the service? The short answer is yes to both. In order to pay for the Seekers/call centre/storage etc we have to charge a small (and we think reasonable) fee. It's legal to charge a fee to manage lost property if costs have been incurred - just like there's a reasonable fee levied by Dublin Bus, by Dublin Airport and oodles of others for managing your stuff.

We work with charities like Oxfam and Vision Aid (and a number of recycling companies) to make sure that unretrieved stuff gets put to some good use. Our service is new and yes it's a wee bit different from how things were done before - but it works. Everyday we reunite people with stuff they didn't even know they'd lost and help increase the chances that you'll get your lost stuff back quickly, safely and without fuss. Drop over to facebook.com/wefoundit and see for yourself!

PS - to the mod: thanks for giving us the right to reply!

delta_bravo

So what happens if someone calls to your office and refuses to pay? Are you allowed to withold their property?

parker kent

How long do you keep stuff before it is sent to charities and other causes? Wish I had known about this when I lost my sunglasses

thomasmore

i'd like to point out that i have purposely set up this account to reply to the md of wefoundit.ie. your a disgrace mate! you can sit there and talk about the wonderful work you do finding peoples lost property... you and your company are vulture's! If the current economic climate can do anything it will allow blood sucking entrepreneurs set up worthless companies with a view to stealing the hard earned cash of the general public... and before I continue, and my point is lost as mere ramble, I would like to state the following... the only reason I have heard of this company and 'service' is that a good friend of mine was recently out in Tripod. Saturday night to be precise! He'd had a few and so, as we have all done in the past, left his jacket in the night club. He rings on Monday morning, with ticket in his hand, to check for a time that he can go in and collect his item of clothing. At this point he is told to contact this company as they have his jacket and will give it back to him for 5 heard earned euro's!!! So much for common decency. I call that theft in any book. Your a farce mate, your company is a disgrace and I genuinely hope and pray that it falls flat on its face... rant over!

Notorious

Sounds like good business to me. If it's valuable to me, I'd prefer to hand over €5 than to be without the item altogether.

deereidy

I think it sounds alright, clever business idea and great if you lose something valuable like a phone, which would you prefer, 250 euro down the drain by not getting it back or a fiver to get it back? Sounds reasonable to me as long as they allow a few days for it to stay in the lost and found in the place it was lost so people can come back to claim it if they know where they left it.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

mcgenius wrote: »

Is it legal? Are we entitled to charge for the service? The short answer is yes to both.

Is this coming from a legal professional. I can only imagine this would be a legal grey area, having a third party handling lost property.

mcgenius wrote: »

It's legal to charge a fee to manage lost property if costs have been incurred - just like there's a reasonable fee levied by Dublin Bus, by Dublin Airport and oodles of others for managing your stuff.
Is this based on legal advice?

Dublin Bus, Dublin airport etc. aren't third parties. You are a third party.

The best way to test the legality of a business like this (unless there's any conclusive statutes or previous instances where it's been tested) would probably be to take a case against it.

Raphael

I'm willing to bet if the core of their business is potentially illegal, they got that checked out by a lawyer.

Pandoras Twist

Having offices in Finglas isnt going to get them far. It's just too awkawrd to get to if you don't know the area. It would take me 4 busses plus a 5er to pick up my journal. Could get another 1 or 2 for that price

deereidy

Sean_K wrote: »

Is this coming from a legal professional. I can only imagine this would be a legal grey area, having a third party handling lost property.

Dublin Bus, Dublin airport etc. aren't third parties. You are a third party.

The best way to test the legality of a business like this (unless there's any conclusive statutes or previous instances where it's been tested) would probably be to take a case against it.

Oh for god's sake, a company finds your stuff and charges you a fiver for the trouble, it's hardly extortion to get something valuable back, would you prefer if they left your stuff to get stolen/soaked in the rain etc. i can't believe people are making such a big deal out of this. Misers

Thomas_S_Hunterson

deereidy wrote: »

Oh for god's sake, a company finds your stuff and charges you a fiver for the trouble, it's hardly extortion to get something valuable back, would you prefer if they left your stuff to get stolen/soaked in the rain etc. i can't believe people are making such a big deal out of this. Misers

The thing is, they're not finding the stuff. UCD staff are.

I could fully understand UCD covering their costs in returning lost property but to simply send all lost property to a third party who's going to make a profit on either returning it or selling it raises some questions. I'm undecided at the moment.

The company's first set of annual returns are due to be filed during this month. Might be worth a look to see what sort of money is being made.

sarahsull

@mcgenius Can I just say that your "service" is just you robbing people's stuff for your own financial gain! It would be really easy for everyone to start taking things from lost and found and selling them on, but we don't because its ILLEGAL and we have ethical standards.

If anything you should run a voluntary reward scheme where by if someone retrieves an item from you they can VOLUNTARILY donate money as a thank you. I'm sure most people wouldn't mind that but demanding money from them is just outrageous. Profiting from other people's misfortune. Proudly. Just disgraceful!

Not to mention the cost incurred by someone from Cork having to travel to Dublin to retrieve something that could have been collected in Cork if you'd just left it alone!!

sarahsull

Thomas_S_Hunterson wrote: »

The best way to test the legality of a business like this (unless there's any conclusive statutes or previous instances where it's been tested) would probably be to take a case against it.

I wish I was a lawyer I'd totally be taking them to court in my spare time!

supernutrino

Notorious wrote: »

Sounds like good business to me. If it's valuable to me, I'd prefer to hand over €5 than to be without the item altogether.

and its that stupidity these scumbags "business model" depends on.

They're scumbags doing something illegal, and they're simply counting on the fact that nobody will challenge it legally.
Something does not stop being YOUR property because it came into a third party's possession.
There is no "finders keepers" rule in the law.
Try getting the CEO of Bank of Irelands car, which went missing, off some middle man and see how that works out, but they know us Joes don't have the kinda muscle to fight this..

Scumbag vultures, and UCD are scumbags for signing a contract with them.
This college is going beyond the joke, even banning softdrinks to make a few extra bucks , they'd sell the rights to our ****ing DNA if they could get away with it.

supernutrino

This world is all about incentives, and UCD clearly don't get that.
When they set up private prisons in the US, it turned out that the prison company was bribing the local judges in the state to hand down harsher sentences because this meant longer terms and more state money for the company that ran the prison "service".
This was BREAKING NEWS BIG STORY at the time but anyone with an ounce of common sense could have told you that was going to happen.

How do we know these knackers (their office is in Finglas, ****ing shocker!! Jesus I didn't see that one coming...) are not robbing on purpose and selling people they're own **** back? and a major university makes a contract with them? Is there anything UCD won't sell? Can we maybe get a Students Union thats less interested in padding their CVs and making political connections and one more interested in fighting to fully cover the university's costs through proper funding so our college does not have to pimp itself out to knackers from Finglas? Are we that desperate to cut and outsource services that we cant keep some stuff in a box under the arts services desk? SERIOUSLY??

bhur

mcgenius wrote: »

Yoiks...! Let me start off by 'fessing up: I'm the MD of wefoundit, and I stumbled across this thread so figured I should probably put in my two cents worth! I'm delighted that we managed to find Pandoras Twist but sorry that what we do wasn't made clear when we got in touch.

Let me give you a little background - I set up wefoundit a few months ago after sitting in a car hire office and watching a few very busy staff do an excellent job of renting plenty of cars. However, as I was waiting I noticed in the corner of their office 2-3 boxes overflowing with lost property. When I asked what they did with all the stuff found in the returned rental cars it became apparent that there was no system in place to handle it and no-one with time enough to chase up the owners. In the box were items that I knew the owners would WANT to get back but that they may not have realised where they had lost it. Or worse - they had called and the company was too busy doing what they do best (ie renting cars) to stop and help them get their stuff back.

So I figured - what would I want to happen if my important stuff were in that box? Would I want the company to move heaven and earth to reunite me with it - definitely! But they're so focussed on renting cars (or whatever) that this non-core part of their business was just falling by the wayside which results in a poor customer service experience and a never-to-be-reclaimed item.

Which is where wefoundit comes in. We help manage lost property for (among others) nightclubs, hotels, bus companies and colleges - and we go to work trying to actively reunite the owners of lost items with their valuable stuff. We have a call centre (1890 FOUNDIT) and a website (www.wefoundit.ie) where people can log their lost property queries and ask us to help find their stuff. Our Seekers also take things one step further - if we can find any detail on the owner we'll do whatever we can to trace them and let them know 'wefoundit'.

Since we opened in July 2010 we've reunited hundreds of people - and plenty of UCD students! - with their lost stuff and so far the reaction has been incredibly positive. We love doing what we do and we'll do whatever we can to get your lost stuff back to you (even if it does mean a random message via Facebook!).

Is it legal? Are we entitled to charge for the service? The short answer is yes to both. In order to pay for the Seekers/call centre/storage etc we have to charge a small (and we think reasonable) fee. It's legal to charge a fee to manage lost property if costs have been incurred - just like there's a reasonable fee levied by Dublin Bus, by Dublin Airport and oodles of others for managing your stuff.

We work with charities like Oxfam and Vision Aid (and a number of recycling companies) to make sure that unretrieved stuff gets put to some good use. Our service is new and yes it's a wee bit different from how things were done before - but it works. Everyday we reunite people with stuff they didn't even know they'd lost and help increase the chances that you'll get your lost stuff back quickly, safely and without fuss. Drop over to facebook.com/wefoundit and see for yourself!

PS - to the mod: thanks for giving us the right to reply!

Awful cuntish i think

Any unclaimed iPhones going on the cheap?:D

papajimsmooth

Whats to stop you selling on all the valuables handed in by UCD and claim you never got them?

stop

papajimsmooth wrote: »

Whats to stop you selling on all the valuables handed in by UCD and claim you never got them?

ucd keep a record of everything they pass on, so i'm told.

RandolphEsq

"Every item is stored for 8 weeks from time of collection, after which some items may be sold to cover the costs of collection/storage."

From the website.

But I think the idea behind the site is useful i.e. that they will actively search for the owners of lost items. The problem is the possibility for fraud. I don't know enough about them to make any accusations of fraud, so all I can say is that the motivation behind the company is useful.

supernutrino

The possibility of fraud?
When theres a system like this set up its a guarantee.

Selling it after 6 weeks yeh whatever if your not picking it up maybe...selling people their own property back is something a mobster would do, and the mobster would probably have stolen it first, and it would not surprise me if thats what was happening here.

bhur

Ara lads,

Intentionally lose a vial of anthrax for them to find.

The shower of *****