Stolen Office Projector Tracked down to Pawn Shop
Tile is great for corporate environments. There are so many shared objects at work that can go missing and often cost a lot of money. Especially for people who have to travel for work, Tile is great for keeping track of those objects or even your luggage.
One of our community members was a victim of a theft of company property, and the Tile community helped him not only recover the stolen asset, but helped the police as well. Two things happened here that are very profound.
1. The Tile community has hit a saturation point where it has started to help recover stolen goods. That is the power of the Tile Network. People talk about the power of the shared economy, and this is a great example of how we are leveraging thousands of people to focus towards a common goal - helping people find lost things.
2. We are giving particular objects a voice for the 1st time, and the objects have a lot to say. In the past, unless you had an expensive GPS tracking device, you had no way to locate things. They were often expensive or the battery didn't last a significant amount of time. The affordability of Tile led to a clever use case that helped save Mike's son $500 dollars and was valid proof of chain of custody to prove it was his! Not bad for 'just' a $25 dollar device.
Who knew such a little device could have such a massive impact.
While Tile is typically used for saving people time, we are always impressed by the many creative ways people are using Tile. What started off at a simple way to find your keys, has evolved into a rich network that is helping people find stolen cars, bikes, & now office equipment. Thank you Mike for your story, and we are glad that we were able to help make things right. PS. Hope your son got Kudos for recovering it! Must have been quite a story at work the next day.
Tile works. Our son had one in a company issued projector. Four months after the projector was stolen out of car, someone who also was had a Life360 app on his phone walked into a pawn store in his town. It picked up the reported stolen tile, transmitted the location across Florida to our son where he was visiting with us. He returned home a day later, went to shop with police and the tile was picked up again on his phone in front of the police and store owner. Warrants issued to person who pawned the projector. Yes, Tile works great.
I have Tile on 10 items now.
-Mike