So I found about a month ago a cell phone so I got a hold of the owners husband who said he would give me a fifty dollar gift certificate from his business and he did not honor it . I don't care that he didnt but here's what I should of done instead .., I could of kept it !<:!- W ->:  
 
Edited by mathsucks, 2012-08-06 02:23:01

Maybe the owner of the phone said that to make sure you showed up?  
Ya never know, or maybe they forgot? If they are business owners, typically they are pretty busy people ;)

Keeping the phone would not necessarily work either because the owner of the phone can contact the phone company to report it lost who in turn can then shut down all functions of the phone so no-one but the original owner can re-activate.That is my understanding

I`m glad not every one is like you. What were you going to hold his phone hostage? I don`t know if you dropped it off or he picked it up. Either way You had his property and you let him know about it. So many scum bags with your attitude. Can`t you find a smile just knowing you did the right thing?

I still think that you did the right thing, just because someone else is not an honorable person does not mean that you have to be like them. Your actions prove that you are a person with a conscience and a conscience can be a very haunting thing, you could of kept the phone, but what would it have been like to wonder every time that you used the phone, that it was not yours.

"the owners husband who said he would give me a fifty dollar gift certificate from his business and he did not honor it"  
 
Did the husband not honour his promise, or did he give the gift certificate and not honour the certificate when you tried to redeem it?

a sarcastic Thanks on your way out...

I feel ya. My SO recently found a wallet and took the time out of her day to get it back to the rightful owner and didn't receive as much as a thank you. We even dropped it off at her "boyfriends" house and I swear the kid acted like we owed it to her LOL. Still waiting for my good karma. ;)

dasher said "I`m glad not every one is like you. What were you going to hold his phone hostage? I don`t know if you dropped it off or he picked it up. Either way You had his property and you let him know about it. So many scum bags with your attitude. Can`t you find a smile just knowing you did the right thing? "

mathsucks went to the trouble of contacting the owner to return the phone. The owner supposedly was going to give a $50 gift certificate. If one makes that kind of offer, then live up to it.  
 
mathsucks was not holding the phone hostage and if the owner was so concerned about the phone then they should demonstrate care and control over their property. It is not up to others to be responsible for their items ~ and that included their "lost" items.  
 
mathsucks did the right thing and returned the phone. mathsucks does not deserve the comment of scum bag.  
 
Of course mathsucks could have mailed the phone back without postage and a return address and the owner would have pay a lot in postage to get the phone back ~ just sayin’. Next time the owner should show more responsibility for their property because next time they may not be so lucky.  

there sure are alot of people here that have poor attitudes, "friendly manitoba" ya right :/  
 
Just the thought of you doing the right things should be enough, why is it that you're expecting something for doing a good deed? I sure hope that if and when you lose something the person that finds your missing item doesn't have the same attitude

Treefrog said "Maybe the owner of the phone said that to make sure you showed up?   Ya never know, or maybe they forgot? If they are business owners, typically they are pretty busy people ;) "

The owners were not that busy to lose their phone and make a supposed commitment for the phone's return. If the owners did not "honour" the gift certificate, then that is a clear demonstration of their "customer service" and "integrity" or lack of.  
 
Everyone is busy and if they take time from their own personal lives to return the property of others that have not demonstrated responsibility then they deserve to be rewarded as promised. That is time the “finder” will never get back.  
 
Personally I take time to return items and expect nothing in return but for those that I have helped to return the favour and help others.  

i don't think it would have been helpful for you to keep the phone as it can be turned off and lost property if identifiable isn't something to keep, to bad the guy promised you something he didn't live up to but you can still live with the fact you did the right thing, even if the owner was a jerk

OP: you were definitely right in returning the phone. I think everyone agrees on that. That shows you to be a caring and good person. However even if the husband offered a gift certificate, I don't believe you should been looking for it. Another post suggested maybe he is busy, preoccupied and forgot. I know it would have been nice of him to remember but you don't know the details on that end.  
 
As to everyone else who generalizes....this does not reflect of everyone else in Brandon or indeed in Manitoba. I chose to believe we are still "Friendly Manitoba"

You could have just said , " finders keepers loosers weepers"...but then you would sound like a 5 year old.

Should I have my hand out when I open/hold a door for someone else? When someone criticizes anothers integrity, it only put theirs in question. Whatever happened to being nice and courteous to each? Let it go, you did the right thing and let karma do it's job.  
 
Edited by snowman5, 2012-08-06 10:53:29

I've never once been returned any items that I've lost... You people must be real lucky. Lost items are not stolen they are simply lost by careless individuals and then found by another. I expect nothing less but to never see that item again if I'm careless like I've been in the past.  
 
 
 
Edited by Silver Stacker, 2012-08-06 11:01:54

Mathsucks wasn't expecting a reward... until he offered one. She was doing the right thing by returning the phone, she didn't need to be lied to!  
 
It bothered me when i was a server and the person paying would say "I left the tip on the table" but didn't. Don't tip me, ok, there's been lots of threads about why, but don't lie to me about it!

it does suck that someone would offer a reward and then not follow thru on it but doing whats right should be good enough for you. doing a good deed is only truly a good deed if you expect nothing in return. at least thats what i think and try to live by.  
 
 

It is extremely unfortunate that you posted this on e-brandon. It is posts like these that have put much more time in between my visits to this web page. I'm guessing you wanted some kind of reassurance that you deserve a reward, and there are some users on this site that unfortunately might give it to you. You did the right thing by returning the phone and karma has a funny way of showing up when you least expect it. Feel good about your good deed and wait for karma to take care of you. Complaining that you didn't get a $50 gift card is ridiculous and you should feel embarrassed about your post.

Silver Stacker said "I've never once been returned any items that I've lost... You people must be real lucky. Lost items are not stolen they are simply lost by careless individuals and then found by another. I expect nothing less but to never see that item again if I'm careless like I've been in the past.         Edited by Silver Stacker, 2012-08-06 11:01:54"

If an item can be returned to it's rightfull owner and someone fails to do so, that's still "wrongfull possession" and should be criminally charged for it. You can not punish a complete stranger and reward yourself because you believe they are "careless Individuals". If someone can't be thoughtfull enought to return a phone and expect nothing in return, then leave it there for the owner to find it, or untill a "good soul" discovers it.

Some of you are acting like mathsucks did something wrong. They returned a phone. Were promised a $50 gift certificate. Promise was not honored. Now upset s/he were lied to even though s/he did the right thing.  
 
It doesn't sound like mathsucks was expecting a reward. Just upset that one was promised but not delivered.  
 
I'm sure many of you would be pissed if you were told you would be getting $50 but then were ignored.

KalikaMarie said "Some of you are acting like mathsucks did something wrong. They returned a phone. Were promised a $50 gift certificate. Promise was not honored. Now upset s/he were lied to even though s/he did the right thing.     It doesn't sound like mathsucks was expecting a reward. Just upset that one was promised but not delivered.     I'm sure many of you would be pissed if you were told you would be getting $50 but then were ignored. "

That comes with the territory for dealing with strangers. Some are thoughtless, others are rude. You can't change them and if you don't want to confront them, then move on. Don't dwell on it, that experience will only eat you up inside and make you a negative person.  
 
Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

There's no reason to lie to the OP about a "reward". That's the part that would have burned me. Here, I found your cell phone. Good bye.  
 
Brenda D, your post is humourous. You state that it's extremely unfortunate that this thread was started and for this reason you visit here less and less but then you go on to post your opinion about the matter. Usually, when there are threads I'm not interested in, I just bypass them without commenting. Sorry, just got a chuckle out of post

Maybe he couldn't get the giftcard, or was so greatfull that he simply forgot to hand it over. Everyone has a moment that they forgot something during a "highly stressed" time. Or maybe he is a prick, you never know. After all, he is a business owner and has to deal with people all the time and offers empty promises all the time.(sarcasm)

Just reading through this made me think of a time when a car slipped into the ditch by our farm, inside the car was a young lady and her little child, I stopped and asked if I went and got a tractor could I pull her out, she replied no. A hour later I returned and asked the same thing and this time she said that CAA was going to come and pull her out, by noon she had been sitting there for three hours, so I once again went out and offered to pull her out, she explained to me that she couldn't pay me for pulling her out. I have to wonder about how we seem to have gone backwards as a society, I have to wonder about people being afraid to ask for help because they may end up paying something that is outrages, and on the other hand, people who stop and offer help but demand to be paid an outrages amount. I guess the world has really changed, there was a time that when one offered help, they were doing just that. At times I have been offered nothing for helping, which doesn't bother me at all, and then there are times where I have been very well paid for helping, which usually leaves me feeling a little guilty since I was the one who stopped to help with no expectations.  
 
mathsucks- when you phoned to return the phone what were your expectations, I believe they were honorable and you just wanted to help someone else out, Now if the other party in this story came on here and said that he didn't have to honor a promise, I likely would have to remind him that a person is as only as good as there word or actions.

If you would like to state a personal attack... I invite you to do it from a profile with your real name.

i can understand why mathsucks would be upset about this. if you were promised something even if you were not expecting it then at least the person could do is honor their word. i hope the business owner reads ebrandon and realizes he shouldn't be making false promises to people. it doesn't matter what kind of reason he may have had for not honoring his word the fact is he should have just said thank you for finding the phone, especially if he had no intentions of giving an award. mathsucks was doing the right thing by returning the phone. but as soon as the business owner offered an award for the phone it changed the whole idea of doing a good deed. offering an award that wasn't asked for then not honoring it...i'd be upset about it too.

Kay1971 said "i can understand why mathsucks would be upset about this. if you were promised something even if you were not expecting it then at least the person could do is honor their word. i hope the business owner reads ebrandon and realizes he shouldn't be making false promises to people. it doesn't matter what kind of reason he may have had for not honoring his word the fact is he should have just said thank you for finding the phone, especially if he had no intentions of giving an award. mathsucks was doing the right thing by returning the phone. but as soon as the business owner offered an award for the phone it changed the whole idea of doing a good deed. offering an award that wasn't asked for then not honoring it...i'd be upset about it too. "

Mathsucks did indeed do the right thing in returning the phone.  
 
Any bonus from here on in is icing on the cake, whether it happens or not. There should be no expectations from a good deed. The bottom line is that the phone was returned in good faith. Whatever happens, if it does happen after this is a bonus.  
 
Just let things be and know that the cell phone is returned to the proper owner.  
 
That's really all that counts in my opinion. The sense of entitlement for owing you anything in my opinion is wrong, whether promised or not.  
 
It's more about returning something to an owner that you can feel proud of.

Mathsucks found a lost item, took the effort to return it to its owner, and did not ask for anything for it in return. It was the business owner who made a promise and did not honor it, and isnt doing the right thing. If he had no intention of honoring his reward, then he shouldnt have offered it in the first place.

but maybe if the business owner's husband promised a gift card, maybe the owner chewed him out for making promises that SHE didn't intend on making. Just a hypothetical scenario (why does everyone think because it's a husband he has the right to make promises for her business? Not saying what they did is right, but maybe that's why?)  
 
OP: You did the right thing. Might as well leave it at that. Hubby lost his wallet at a golf course one weekend, and found it right where he'd dropped it - minus the cash, of course. :-