If you are going to leave your phone on the back seat of an Uber in Dhaka, statistics say it will be on a Friday, after lunch. Uber Bangladesh published the sixth edition of its Lost and Found Index on Monday, 6 June 2022, covering June 2021 to May 2022, and Friday is the most forgetful day of the week, with a peak around 4 pm and a second bump at noon.
What gets left behind
- Most forgotten: mobile phones, followed by cameras, headphones and keys, then wallets and umbrellas.
- By day: phones go missing most on Fridays and Sundays, headphones on Saturdays, cash on Mondays and bags on Thursdays.
- Peak days of the year: 19 June and 18 November 2021 and 25 and 28 March 2022; the single busiest day for lost-item reports was 30 March 2022.
The pattern is not mysterious. Friday afternoon in Dhaka is Jummah, family visits and the weekend rush to Uttara and Dhanmondi; people carry more, ride distracted and get out in a hurry. The umbrella entry needs no explanation in a monsoon country.
How to get it back
Armanur Rahman, Uber's head for Bangladesh and East India, said the point of the index is to remind riders that the app has a process. It works like this:
- Open the Uber app, tap Your Trips and select the ride.
- Tap Find lost item, then Contact driver about a lost item.
- Enter a number you can be reached on. Uber connects you to the driver through an anonymised call so neither side sees the other's number.
- Agree on a hand-over. The driver is not obliged to come back for free; returning the item usually means paying for that trip, and a tip is the decent thing.
If it is a phone you have lost, use a friend's phone to log into the app or the Uber website, and call your own number first; drivers are more likely to answer than a stranger's number. If the driver cannot be reached within 24 hours, the in-app support form escalates the case.
Prevention, briefly
Turn on Find My iPhone or Google's Find My Device before you need it, keep the phone in a front pocket rather than on the seat, and do a "phone, wallet, keys" check before the door closes. That last habit alone would empty most of Uber's index.
