Although cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and cheap vacation packages are definitely the way to travel, they do little to mitigate the distress felt when someone finds that they have accidentally left an expensive mobile device, be it a tablet or smartphone, behind.
Travelers often carry at least two or three mobile devices on the road. Such devices are sometimes placed in an airplane seatback pocket and forgotten in the mad dash to deplane.
A survey of five airports, including Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix, last June found that travelers left a total of 979 laptops, tablets, smartphones and flash drives behind during the month of May alone. Over one third (365) were expensive tablets and smartphones.
Mobile devices tend to be so small that they are easily hidden underneath papers or trash and left behind when passengers exit planes. Airlines are currently warehousing hundreds of tablets. As many as half of the mobile devices they collect are never reclaimed.
The following are steps that can be taken to improve the odds of getting back a missing mobile device:
1) Tape a business card to the case
2) Register it with the manufacturer.
3) Sign up for apps, such as Find My iPhone or Find my iPad that allows users to track the location of their devices, lock it, or send a message to whomever has it.
People who leave mobile devices in airplane seat pockets are more likely to get them back because it is a fixed location. When something is left in the back of a taxi, the odds of ever seeing it again are much longer.
In the end though the return of a device is much likelier if the person who found it is honest and interested in reuniting it with its rightful owner.
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