slacker
Team HuskerBoard
Irregular News for 8.26.05
Larimer County, CO -- Some Cingular Wireless customers feel deceived and angry after cell phones they thought they had donated to charity, were instead sold on eBay.
Loveland realtor Lydia Bliven got a new cell phone in July and offered to donate her old phone.
"Our impression was (that it was going) to a local battered women's shelter," says Bliven.
John Ebbinghaus of Livermore had a similar experience at the Cingular Wireless store on Harmony Road.
"The salesperson asked 'Would you like to donate the phone?'" Ebbinghaus recalls. "I said yeah, that's no problem, what do you donate it to? And he mentioned a women's shelter."
But the phones never made it to a women's shelter. Both of the phones were purchased on eBay by Carol Winslow in Norfolk, Virginia.
"I have this woman Lydia's phone in my hand," Winslow told our affiliate WAVY-TV in Norfolk. "Somebody sold her phone out of Colorado and made a 100 percent profit on something they never owned."
Winslow had no trouble tracking down the phones' previous owners. They were still programmed with the telephone number directories.
"I'm very concerned because my phone is my business," says Bliven. "It's my office as well as my personal contacts and I consider it an invasion of privacy."
Both phones were sold on eBay by A.C. Lao, who worked at the Cingular store until recently. The company would not say whether he was fired. Contacted by our partners at the Fort Collins Coloradoan, Lao said "I can't really talk about it." He denied selling the phones on eBay saying "That's something I had heard of, but I was not really a part of it."
A Cingular Wireless spokesperson told 9News the company "takes this situation very seriously." Anne Marshall of Cingular says this was a case of "an employee acting improperly." She said the company was taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. The company recommends that people who donate phones anywhere should personally delete their contact numbers.
Full Story
Larimer County, CO -- Some Cingular Wireless customers feel deceived and angry after cell phones they thought they had donated to charity, were instead sold on eBay.
Loveland realtor Lydia Bliven got a new cell phone in July and offered to donate her old phone.
"Our impression was (that it was going) to a local battered women's shelter," says Bliven.
John Ebbinghaus of Livermore had a similar experience at the Cingular Wireless store on Harmony Road.
"The salesperson asked 'Would you like to donate the phone?'" Ebbinghaus recalls. "I said yeah, that's no problem, what do you donate it to? And he mentioned a women's shelter."
But the phones never made it to a women's shelter. Both of the phones were purchased on eBay by Carol Winslow in Norfolk, Virginia.
"I have this woman Lydia's phone in my hand," Winslow told our affiliate WAVY-TV in Norfolk. "Somebody sold her phone out of Colorado and made a 100 percent profit on something they never owned."
Winslow had no trouble tracking down the phones' previous owners. They were still programmed with the telephone number directories.
"I'm very concerned because my phone is my business," says Bliven. "It's my office as well as my personal contacts and I consider it an invasion of privacy."
Both phones were sold on eBay by A.C. Lao, who worked at the Cingular store until recently. The company would not say whether he was fired. Contacted by our partners at the Fort Collins Coloradoan, Lao said "I can't really talk about it." He denied selling the phones on eBay saying "That's something I had heard of, but I was not really a part of it."
A Cingular Wireless spokesperson told 9News the company "takes this situation very seriously." Anne Marshall of Cingular says this was a case of "an employee acting improperly." She said the company was taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. The company recommends that people who donate phones anywhere should personally delete their contact numbers.
Full Story