At 59 years old, Wayne Dobson should be enjoying the relaxed, stress-free life of a retiree. Instead, he’s been spending the past few years dealing with people who think he’s a cellphone thief.
As the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, that’s all due to an apparent glitch in Sprint’s location-tracking services that, for some reason, has been directing owners of missing phones (as well as police) to Dobson’s home in North Las Vegas. As a result, he’s had people knocking on his door at all hours of the night, asking for cellphones he doesn’t have. “It’s a hell of a problem,” Dobson said. “It would be nice to be able to get a good night’s sleep.”
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THESE TECHNOLOGY PETS THEY HAVE.”
It all began in 2011, when a couple knocked on his door around midnight one weekend. They were convinced that Dobson had stolen their phone, having been led to his doorstep by their phone-finder app, but the 59-year-old had no idea what they were talking about. “I just said, ‘I don’t know these people; I don’t go where they go,’” he explained. “I’m 59 years old. I don’t care about these technology pets they have.”
After several similar incidents, Dobson soon noticed a trend: most of the people showing up at his home were with Sprint. When he called the company, a technician there acknowledged the issue, but couldn’t offer a solution, telling Dobson that cellphone GPS technology can only provide a general starting point for a phone’s location — and that just happened to be his home.
“IT’S LIKE PAVLOV’S RESPONSE.”
And it’s not just cellphone owners who are getting tangled up in the crosshairs. On several occasions, police have shown up at Dobson’s home in response to 911 calls shown to originate from his residence. Local authorities say they will begin flagging calls to Dobson’s house, but they’ll still have to dispatch officers there unless they can determine that there really isn’t an issue.
Sprint, for its part, says it’s working on a fix, though it has yet to determine the nature of the problem. “We will research the issue thoroughly and try to get to the bottom of what is going on and if it has anything to do with our company,” Sprint spokeswoman Rachael Crocker wrote in an email to the LVRJ. In the meantime, Dobson says he’s living on pins and needles. “It’s like Pavlov’s response now,” he said. “I dread the thought when I hear a car drive by that they’re going to be pulling in and knocking on my door.”
Your lost iPhone is not this man's problem
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