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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

Should have been a travel insurance claim.

This person lost their laptop at an airport - to all intents and purposes it was stolen. They even bought a replacement on the assumption they weren't going to see it again.

The person who returned the laptop returned an unusable MacBook that Apple refuses to even confirm is the original laptop that belonged to them. In addition they incurred shipping and import costs to have this brick shipped. But they don't have their laptop back in working order, so... effectively that laptop was stolen and destroyed, just as surely as if a stranger at the airport had grabbed it and smashed it in front of them.

Let the insurance company deal with this stuff.

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Are there other solutions to remedy the pain? Yes. Could they not just get back the same laptop they already have? Most definitely.

Whenever there's a story shared on HN that implies a negative sentiment towards an Apple policy, people come out of the woodwork talking about how we can work around the policy or why Apple has to do it the way everyone hates. Why? Why does the biggest company in the world get volunteers spitshining their PR?

Apple has to do it the way everyone hates to prevent apple device owners from being regular victims of armed robbery.

I'm really skeptical that any of this stuff significantly deters thieves.

https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/11/apples-activation-lock-lea...

> A new report from Reuters found that iPhone theft dropped by 50 percent in London, 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York. The drops represent theft activity as measured during the 12 months following Apple’s introduction of the remote locking feature in September 2013 as part of iOS 7. With iOS 8, Apple made its so-called said “kill switch” active by default, in accordance with California regulation, and that should help the rates of theft continue to trend downwards.

It doesn't have to be this way :)

in what way do you think apple's process should be altered to provide the same level of assurance but also let the blogger get their laptop back?

or are you suggesting that everyone else should just accept more risk?

If you have receipts for an iDevice and you have the iDevice in your possesion, Apple could just unlock the device. They could also lock the device to an iCloud account even if the user doesn't enable FindMyDevice on it.

And I will re-iterate, what's with all this risk management from unpaid volunteers for the biggest tech company in the world? :)

An old invoice doesn’t necessarily indicate current ownership. I have the invoice of pretty much everything I’ve purchased in the past decade (I scan in anything physical), including for a lot of items that I no longer have ownership of.

Unfortunately, except for the invoice, all of the other evidence pointed to the blogger _not_ being the current owner.

In this blog posts scenario, the user has the device and the receipt, but the device is locked to another iCloud account. Is that sufficient here?

What stops me from selling my laptop anonymously, robbing it from the person I sold it to, then having Apple unlock it?

I know it seems a weird case, but there are some pretty wild and convoluted scams out there, and this is pretty tame in comparison.

So if I have your receipt I get access to your device?

If you have the receipt, and ID showing your picture and the name under which I ordered the device, and can receive physical mail at the address to which the device was shipped, and/or at the address listed on the cloud account that we both know the device effectively forced me to create, then yes.

> at the address listed on the cloud account

From my reading of the post, this piece is missing. The blogger doesn’t recognize the iCloud account _currently_ associated with the device.

If you have access to the apple ID that paid for a device, sure, why not.

Unfortunately, this wasn't covered by the travel insurance that goes along with my credit card.

I didn't purchase additional travel insurance, and I'm in the fortunate position that I can eat the cost of a replacement, so it probably isn't worth it.

I really take issue with the idea that your travel insurance will save you in a case like this. It's almost a naive position to take. Travel insurance is notoriously exclusionary when it comes to individual items, especially high value items.

Travel insurance is probably one of the most least likely types of insurance where there will be a positive outcome for the consumer.

Realistically, can this result in anything else besides the insurance company laughing at you?

An Allianz OneTrip Premiere trip insurance covers $2000 for loss or theft of baggage and personal effects. They reported the loss to airport security. Getting a written notice of that report ought to be enough to file a claim.

That is indeed how insurance works, you lose something and they reimburse you, thanks for the clarification.

I thought that you meant the insurance company would reimburse for a mac that was returned to you without physical damage but locked by Apple.

If you later recover an item that you've successfully claimed an insurance claim against, you would just have to hand over the item to your insurance company (who might not even want it at that point). And you should have been able to successfully claim the laptop since at the airport, it was most definitely lost and/or stolen.

Also, how can you even assess that the laptop has no physical damage? They can't boot into the OS and can't see that the laptop is in fact completely physically intact. What if the other party broke the webcam or one of the USB ports?

This entirely misses the point. Using travel insurance for "loss or theft" of something when something is actually, well, lost. The guy has possession of his property, how has anything been "lost"?

I really, really doubt a travel insurance company would pay out on this one.

The computer was “lost” for a whole month before being found and 2 months before being returned. You should claim losses immediately anyway so probably he could have gotten the refund before even knowing it was found.

>Using travel insurance for "loss or theft" of something when something is actually, well, lost.

If someone grabs your laptop and takes it in an airplane that takes off without you, it's arguably been lost or in fact been stolen.

Are you suggesting the recipient found another Activation Locked laptop, presumably stolen, that somebody was keeping "for parts", swapped the keyboard for a Japanese keyboard, sent OP that locked laptop and wiped/kept their laptop?

Considering how long it took for the laptop to be returned and Apple's resistance in removing the lock, it is possible that the recipient waited until an acquaintance returned from Japan carrying a similar laptop (acquired cheaply or even for free due to the lock), and simply shipped that to OP.

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