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Ended with my other half but is keeping my laptop
stuntmaster
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I ended with my other half, however went to collect my bits from their place, and it was all passed through the window.
however refuses to give my works laptop back saying I have given it as a gift to them.
It is asset tagged.
However there is an independent witness who can verify I gave it as a gift. I've not done or said such thing.
I left it there because when i visited I needed it to remote to work. Be shouted at with 'take me to court' so obviously feels confident that they are in a strong position. said if i wanted it back I could buy it for £150.
Any advice appreciated.
Don't want any problems but seems lime i'm in a dilemma
im off to bed now, will reply tomorrow sometime when I get 5 mins.
however refuses to give my works laptop back saying I have given it as a gift to them.
It is asset tagged.
However there is an independent witness who can verify I gave it as a gift. I've not done or said such thing.
I left it there because when i visited I needed it to remote to work. Be shouted at with 'take me to court' so obviously feels confident that they are in a strong position. said if i wanted it back I could buy it for £150.
Any advice appreciated.
Don't want any problems but seems lime i'm in a dilemma
im off to bed now, will reply tomorrow sometime when I get 5 mins.
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no not at all. Never gave anything, I stayed round every other weekend. and didn't always leave it there. I'd visited on a wednesday, left it overnight (usually no issue) then went to collect it fri when I broke up. because I was going to use it the following weekend anyway to do some work remotely.
In hindsight I should have collected it wednesday but at that point I wasn't breaking up.
it's not your property so you can't give it away
go to the police, it's theft
Contact the police, explain they have your property and are seeking to blackmail you personally to get it back. If it is your employer's property inform them and they can also take action in concert with the police. Explain you will seek compensation for loss of earnings due to their actions and for every day you can't work because of them, you will seek compensation from them as a result. Should you be fired as a result of this, take action against them further for loss of earnings and employment as well as personal damages for stress relating to the loss of your job and relationship with them. Make them realise how expensive it will be for them to try fight you over this and that they will end up losing more than £150 in the end. If they have any sense, they will give it back to you. Their independent witness does not matter as you cannot give away what is not yours if it is provided by your employer for work purposes. They are being spiteful and stupid but the law is not on their side.
Alternatively create a little white lie that they are threatening to destroy it or wipe the hard drive if you don't pay up and seek a police escort to retrieve the item because you fear for your safety and also the destruction of your property in light of their emotionally volatile state that is causing them to act so differently and try to blackmail you.
Up to you.
With the exception of the little white lie part I agree with your post.
Telling lies to the police is never a good idea. If you got caught out in the lie then they would probably become suspicious of you.
Exactly, lying to the police is a ridiculous idea.
I'd say that the fact the laptop is work property shows, as others have said, that it's unlikely that you'd have given it away, giving your side credibility.
One thig puzzles me though, how is your ex able to use it? Surely there is a password?
But the harsh truth would be from me if I was your manager, was that the lap top was placed in your care and its loss is your responsibilty. In short you may have to replace it and learn a harsh lesson.
As your manager I wouldnt want to get involved in your love life mess nor would the Police want to get involved in a domestic that kust leaves you the civil court.
My advice ... if you still have a key go get it back and saw dead fish into the curtains when you do it.
Will have a chat with work tomorrow and get the ball rolling. What they have likely done is gone in cahoots with their friend to make up a cock n ball story.
I have two work laptops, they both have no company information on per sae other than the security measures, everything is done via remote access (if anyone wants to know look up SSH on google). I have two because half of our work servers are linux the others windows. laptop 1 is linux for linux access and laptop 2 is windows for windows access ( i know linux can get into windows etc but I have it that way for 100% compatibility reasons). The windows one only gets used to access the backup server upon approval of my works password and SSH Keytoken. Recently we have been hitting issues with backupexec taking a long time so I use that laptop to monitor it. it's not at theirs all the time but usualy with me on weekends should there be a fault I can get in to work. (saves having to drive a fair trip) I'd used it Wednesday and on autopilot forgotten about it. i was due to stay at theirs yesterday but decided i wanted to end the relationship so went down friday.
it is blackmail and thats exactly what shes doing. she's hoping I get the sack for it.
so we shall see what happens from here.
thanks again all, really do appreciate it.
100% compatibility? What are you talking about? If you access your Linux servers via ssh, then it makes no difference what laptop you're using. Are you saying you have 1 laptop with windows on and the other runs a linux distro?
there's other things but that's not the point here in this thread.
Ok then. Was just curious.:)
Those are making things difficult.
thanks again.
State you will be round to collect it at x time on x date and if she fails to hand it over you will have no alternative but to involve the police immediately to recover it on behalf of your employer.
Lying to the police, is not a good idea. :rolleyes:
I would first give the police a call to see if they can retrieve it (I don't know how feasible it would be to get the serial number from work to show the police). Don't offer your ex any money or goods in exchange for it as this is just giving into blackmail. If the police pay them a visit depending on how brazen your ex is or not this may be all that's needed to get your laptop back.
If you can't get the police to visit to regain possession of your LT then ask your solicitor to send a firmly worded letter to the person who is in possession of your LT stating that this item is the property of X company and it must be returned to it's rightful keeper (ie you) or actions will be taken to repossess it.
The letter will cost you but it'd be worth it just to get the LT back. The other way is to ask someone from your work to call to collect it (a supervisor/manager) you could simply explain you were at this residence when the break-up happened the laptop was with you and now this person won't return it to you.
I know, you're basically asking them to find all your porn!
It may be that in order to do anything, the police will call your company first to verify that it is company property. If it is a recorded asset, you should be able to get all the model details, serial numbers, etc, from whatever department retains that information. The police will need that to verify that the computer you (or they) identify is the one that belongs to the company.
Whether or not your manager, legal department, whoever, will be amenable to writing letters is something you can only approach with backing from your manager so there's no point in imagining what any such letter may say at this stage.
It may be that your company isn't interested in getting that involved. If you involve a solicitor on your own behalf, your company still needs to know.
Don't threaten your gf with police etc. If she's that spiteful, she'll get rid of (or hide it with her friend) the laptop before there's any visit. Don't offer to bribe her or pay her.
And don't get distracted by comments on this thread questioning why you left it there in the first place blah blah. It's just an effort to be judgemental or show supposed technical competency whereas, as far as I can see, you just want advice on retrieving the pc.
Thankyou, that's a very good post. I'm just getting advice so I don't make the wrong decision.
Better to get it all mentioned on here and do it properly and make mistakes.
As you say yes being spiteful will cause her to remove it, threatening police will cause her to destroy it.