Powers106

Back in late 90's I left a phone in a taxi when I exited to check-in at CDG, got it back at Paris lost and found a few weeks later in the 14th/15th arrond. IIRC, but couldn't believe the good luck! Once in Belgium I left a bag on the train, got it back in Antwerp train station. Amazing! Left an iPad on the plane in Dubai last year, got it back from the DXB lost and found. Just saying, though I don't know where you were dropped off (I.e. Hotel) or why the driver didn't return yet etc., keep looking, and do try the Paris lost and found, some passenger could have found if and not trusted to give it to the driver, also remember dropping at lost and found might be low priority for the finder! But eventually...good luck!

ajGoes

I got to experience that in the fall of 2011. I met my 85-year-old father in London. On his flight over from LAX he started worrying about the $700 worth of train tickets he was carrying, so he got them out to make sure he had them. Relieved to find that he did, he promptly lost them. Anxiety makes people do things like that.

We were getting ready for bed when I saw him start rummaging around looking for what turned out to be the lost train tickets. I already had a PDF of the receipts and knew they were insured, so I wasn't terribly worried. Unfortunately though, he was, and anxiety is contagious. He hardly slept that night, and I got to spend hours that night and the next couple of days calling various lost-and-founds, ticket agencies, police departments, etc. I was glad that I'd set up my phone with Google Voice and Sipdroid so I could make all the calls I wanted to, at least while I was in range of the hotel's wifi, for free to the US or only US$0.02/minute to the UK.

It wasn't a great way to spend my first day back in London. In the end, though, I got an entertaining story, some interesting slices of London life, a quick visit to the Oxford Police station (no sign of Morse or Lewis!), and eventually, new train tickets for my dad.

wwu123

Yahillwe, thanks for the continued efforts.

We did go to the Objet Trouves at 36 Rue de Morillons today, which is the main Paris lost and found. They were well organized and searched their computer by the cab number on the receipt. Nothing turned up, but they took all of our information and also the receipt information and said they'd try to contact the cab company as well. In any case, if the bag does turn up later, they have means to even ship it back home later.

So we're focusing on the more pressing urgency of my wife being able to re-enter the U.S. now. We have an official report from the lost and found, a police report, her mom in Tokyo has fedex'ed a birth certificate that we'll receive Monday to replace her passport at the Japan embassy on Monday afternoon, and we have an appointment at the US embassy on Tuesday morning at 9:30 am. The embassy has stated it takes about 48 hours to process a transportation foil, which at that pace will cause us to miss our flights home Thursday - but being stuck in Paris for a few extra days, I can hardly call that a burden...

The biggest hurdle may well be the US embassy - while they seem to have two-hour emergency passport procedures for US citizens, permanent residents seem to just fall under general immigration services. Ironically the only proof they seem to accept for a green card is, well, a photocopy of the very same missing green card...by chance I do have a photocopy of her old one that expired in 2013, hopefully they'll be reasonable.

It's Friday evening, and since nothing we can get done while the embassies are closed for the weekend, finally we'll try to stop worrying and enjoy Paris for a few days!

Louie_LI

For your US embassy appointment, I'd recommend getting to the embassy 30 min before your appointment time. Leave as many of your electronics in your hotel as possible. Your bags will be thoroughly searched and cell phones, lipsticks and other potentially dangerous items will be kept at the guard station for you to pick up when you leave. You may want to bring 4 euros in change in case your wife needs to use the photo booth (there is a change machine, but just to be sure).

wwu123

Thanks for the tips. I guess that leaves out showing them a bunch of photos and online documents from the mobile phone to prove my wife has been living in the U.S. the last 12 years... we'll rely on the crying three-year-old trick - surely they don't have the heart to separate a small child from her mother?

In any case we have no choice but to cut it close today - my wife has to pick up her new passport from the Japan embassy when it opens this morning at 9:30 am, and the US embassy says we need to be inside by 10 am. We did have US-sized passport photos done at a photo store recommended nearby the US embassy yesterday just to be sure.

Getting her Japan passport yesterday was hassle-free in its own Japanese way. Original birth certificate had to be fedex'ed from Tokyo, we waited at the apartment all morning until the courier showed up. At the embassy, they already had a scan of her lost passport (from where!) despite her only having given her name on the phone, but she still needed to show her documentation anyway. The standard procedures included receiving a verbal scolding by them, writing a letter of sincere apology for losing the passport, as well as another written note promising never to make such an extraordinary request again (for one-day passport service) - all of these things probably go into your "permanent record"...

Yahillwe

OP, hope you got everything settled.

Have a good trip back home and see you next time.

wwu123

Just wanted to give an update, as numerous FTer's were generous to try to help. We made a difficult decision to split up - I and my three-year-old have now returned home to the U.S., while my wife cannot return until at least next week sometime. Yahillwe continues to graciously offer local assistance.

The embassy was more than fine with our documentation, unfortunately Tuesday coincided with a massive database outage that has delayed things indefinitely. Per their last daily update: "U.S. Embassy cannot foreseen when your Transportation Foil will be ready to be issued, as the status continues as pending since yesterday and the day before onto the system. The State Department's global database for issuing travel documents has crashed on Tuesday, resulting in major delays for potentially millions of people around the world waiting for U.S. passports, and visas (and transportation foils)." News about the outage:
Yahoo News - Millions Stranded as US Passport and Visa System Hit by Mystery Glitch

Wife has extended her stay at the apartment, and is armed with my laptop, phone w/local SIM and Internet, medications, my ATM card and plenty of cash.

On a lighter note, on her last fruitless trip to the Objets Trouves in 15e to see if her bag turned up, she realized it was the exact neighborhood she lived for a summer 20 years ago when taking a professional patissiere training at Le Cordon Bleu...

Yahillwe

OP, texted you, hope your wife is safely at home.

wwu123

Unfortunately, the global State Dept computer problems still persist with no word on progress, so she's still in Paris now. We've somewhat given up though, she's retrieved her passport from the US embassy and will fly to Tokyo tomorrow to wait it out.

She can do a couple of weeks of work and meetings there, and will have to as she'll have to start the process with embassy in Tokyo all over and her application will go to the back of a weekslong queue once the systems are back up.

gum

It is really unbelievable that a Nation with a leading industry in the fields of credit cards, finance and IT has no contingency plan for IT failures.

Some forgery-proof high-tech stationery would help out in these rare cases.

And an offline-list faxed to the corresponding port of entry....

Yahillwe

OP any news about the Mrs?

wwu123

The Mrs flew uneventfully from Paris to Tokyo last Thursday to ride this database issue out for possibly several weeks, and get some related business and work done there. Paris was very hospitable to her waiting things out, but potentially she'd still have been waiting there now, we'll never know. Now that she's in Tokyo for several days, I've already sent her replacement credit and debit cards, and been able to borrow a few other things from friends. Ironically the Orange prepaid SIM we bought worked great for her in Paris; in Tokyo she couldn't rent/buy a SIM without her own credit card until I fedex'ed the replacements.

The US State Dept has been more forthcoming on their Facebook page with daily updates; their assertion has been that the database has been back up since the 23rd, or the day after we first visted the Paris embassy, but that it's been running slow. Contradictory messages have come out whether we should wait a short time or long time. Passport and immigrant visas are supposed to have high priority and few day turnaround; my wife's situation is akin to an immigrant, but is not a visa per se, the relative rarity of the "transportation letter" may be putting it in a black hole.

An update 11 hours ago claims they've largely fixed the problem and all passport/immigrant visas are processed and most of the nonimmigrant (i.e. visitor) visa backlog as well. Once the Mrs picked up her passport from the Paris embassy, she was out of the queue and so started over again Monday 9 am at the Tokyo embassy. The Tokyo embassy was a model of Japanese efficiency but less than informative about the database issues; they asserted it would not be a factor and that it would take 1-2 days (which is what the Paris embassy initially told us). 24 hours later, still no document, we shall see in a few more hours when the work day starts whether they will succeed by the 48 hour mark.

Things went a little from bad to worse as a single parent for a few weeks. My daughter's daycare coincidentally was shutting down this week, and we'd gotten cleared from a waitlist for a new preschool; end of last week I went in just to check in with the new preschool and they had NO record of our application (though they'd just cashed our deposit check). I managed to enroll her at another preschool, but there was a few days of scrambling around that I'd sooner have avoided.