For whatever reason my parents bought a 2020 iPhone SE, put it in a drawer and forgot it. They gave it to me to sell on eBay, now the buyer is telling me he’s been AT&T and the Apple Store and the phone has been reported stolen and will not work. How is that possible if as far as I know the phone hasn’t been turned on since leaving the store and has never had an Apple ID logged onto it and how can I turn this off the seller can use the phone?
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Had this happen to me when I was 18. To quickly concluded, I fell for it. Dude kept the phone and my money. I was stupid, don’t be me.
AT&T Phones are locked until they have been activated on their network by the account who bought them. Then they have to stay active for a certain amount of time which I can’t remember but I think is 90 days.
Bought a phone on Amazon that AT&T told me said was reported stolen. It’s possible that a previous owner either had an unpaid balance or the owner reported stolen. They wouldn’t give me a direct answer just that the device IMEI was blacklisted. I contacted the seller on Amazon and they said they buy them in bulk from an auction so they don’t know/check which ones are blacklisted.
Did they put it in a drawer and ignore all future bills from AT&T? maybe it IS stolen because they didn’t pay monthly installments?
Scam
So thanks to you guys I’ve checked the IMEI and it says the phone IS blacklisted, although not why. My fear was that the seller was trying to scam me even though he has over 2000 positive reviews but it seems like he’s not lying. So unless there’s another way he can be scamming me I’m just going to refund them and then just smash this thing into pieces out of annoyance. 😂
Thanks for the help everyone.
Did you know the IMEI before you sold it? Could have given you a fake one
Just sell it overseas, won’t be blacklisted over there.
It’s probably mine :(
Send me the imei number. I’ll confirm for you if it’s blacklisted, and when it happened.
This same situation happened to me. How can I find out the date the phone was blacklisted?
I use a paid website. If you wanna send me the imei I can send you a screenshot of the report
If they bought it at an AT&T store, why not just bring it in to the store and clear up the confusion? 2020 wasn’t the stone ages, they’ll definitely have a record of the purchase
After attempting to activate a tablet, Verizon said it had been reported lost. A week later, Verizon claimed they attempted to contact the owner but got no response. The Verizon guy said it was several models old, so he will not want to give back the insurance money. No, I could not have the contact information for privacy reasons. So, the became a WiFi toy for visiting grand kids. When next I wanted to buy a used Samsung, I met the lady at the Verizon store to verify it was a device she could legally sell and I could active it. It was only then I paid in cash. That was three years ago and it worked fine until I bought my iPhone last March.
If it’s been bought from somewhere that you know it’s legit and brand new, then he’s trying to scam you for a full refund unless he’s sent you proof.
Maybe you put the SN or Imei in public and naked in ad and someone report it as stolen , you never know
It’s a scam. I sold a brand new phone on eBay. The buyer tried to return saying that the SIM card didn’t fit. Record your serial number. Place it in the ad listing.
If the buyer swap phones you should be able to tell, the serial number and everything is on the box and should match with the one on the phone
He’s just trying to get a free phone because hes poor and cares about spending $1000. I’ve learned my lesson with eBay. I’ve lost a few grand selling new gpu’s. All the buyer has to say is the description was inaccurate and eBay just gives them their money back.