Protection when buying a second hand mobile

markyjo

Hey guys!

I just wondered if you savvy people knew any info on this. I recently upgraded my contract with Vodafone to a pretty new Samsung Galaxy S 2. And I hate it.

So I went on gumtree to sell and instead listed it to swap. I then found an ad of a guy wanting to swap an iPhone 4 for a Galaxy S2 so I got in contact. I'm now swapping my phone for his this weekend. I've seen the receipt for the iPhone and it was bought in November last year (so I know it's not stolen and stuff).

HOWEVER. How do I know that this time next week my phone won't suddenly become blacklisted - barred from making calls and texts and what not? What happens if it does?

The only security I guess I have is that I can have a bar put on the Galaxy if he does it to me.

Is there anyway to register the phone as mine? I'll get the receipt from him and stuff.

Cheers

bengalknights

When its synced with itunes you would then register it as yours on your itunes account.This wont stop it being blacklisted if reported though.

Jon_01

The networks have no mechanism in place to transfer ownership.

There's nothing you can do to stop a possible blacklisting, I'm afraid. If the owner calls and reports it lost or stolen it will be blacklisted.

Even if the guy selling it has a reciept try the phone with your sim before you complete the swap. There are people going into dealers with forged forms of ID and getting new contracts (performing ID theft).
This means they will have a receipt for the phone and it will be genuine.
These handset will be blacklisted as soon as the network realise. If the reciept is dated Nov then the network will know by now and have blacklisted it, so if it works now you can be fairly sure its not one of those. . .