You lose something in a taxi. Or lets be more realistic, you think you lost something in a taxi. I say think, because if you knew exactly where you lost it, you wouldn’t have lost it in the first place. When people usually lose possessions they try and retrace their footprints through the day. Somewhere along the way comes a cab ride, and it’s always a good idea to check with the cab company (and the restaurant and your friends house etc etc). A majority of lost item callers to cab companies are not even sure if it was the correct cab company they are calling to begin with, but it doesn’t hurt to try them all.

Taxi Companies get many phone calls from people trying to do exactly this; retrace their footprints through the day, in hope of finding a misplaced item. Most of these are false alarms and the said customer calls back acknowledges that the item has been found elsewhere. The items that are never found are assumed to have been lost in the taxi. Thanks to the recent malicious propaganda against Vancouver’s taxi drivers by CTV News this assumption has become even stronger.

Now there definitely are times when one has just used something, like a wallet or a phone and you know for sure that it was there a few minutes ago in the taxi.

If you were at a restaurant and left something at the table, the restaurant still has first access as they prepare the table for the next customer. In comparison, on busy nights the taxi driver is not really turning the backseat over for the next rider, who in fact has a better chance of finding any property left behind. Most cab drivers do not check the back seat after the customer. Two areas that are not visible from the driver’s vantage are the below the seats and between the door and the seat.

What the rider finds and keeps, the taxi driver knows nothing about.

Vancouver Taxi Lost and Found