'illegal' to buy 3 or more phones

RupertRoker

This is a bit of an odd one.

A few days ago I was asked to buy a number of mobile phones for volunteers in an organisation that I'm a part of to use to make calls so that they didn't have to use their own phones (and so pay for the calls themselves). I found that Carphone Warehouse were offering some excellent deals on pay as you go phones (including one less than £3 with a £10 top up)

When I went into store to try and buy these phones I was told that the maximum I could buy was two and was told very clearly that it was 'illegal' to buy more than 2 phones at a time. I pushed for some clarification and the store staff kept on switching back and forth from 'illegal' to 'against company policy'.

I pushed for details on what law would be broken but the store manager didn't seem to know. I was also told that this was a 'fraud prevention' measure.

I've got a law degree and I can't see any laws this could possibly be breaking. I've tried to raise this on Twitter with the Carphone Warhouse without much luck. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Would CPW like to comments?

I can't post links as I'm a new forum user but if you search Twitter for @rupertroker you'll find my exchanges with CPW

vikingaero

Phone companies don't like people buying up large amounts of stock as there is the possibility that the phones will be exported. This means that the companies lose revenue, the network lose call termination fee revenue and CPW will lose the network fee/commission for a phone activated on a network.

The CPW are basically being stupid - it's not illegal, but against company policy. I suspect they have been misinformed by management.

RupertRoker

Thanks vikingaero. I suspect this myself. I'm trying to call CPW's bluff on this and get them to admit to it and stop lying to their customers. No such luck yet though!

Jon_01

Its not just CPW, I've heard the same thing said in Sainsburys as well.

mazza111

Phones 4 u have this policy too. I had purchased a cheap phone from there a couple of years ago as a back up, and paid by card.

Then last year bought my android phone, paid by card.

Tried to buy the same phone for my daughter's birthday, couldn't pay by card, they wouldn't let me because I had exceeded their allowed amount. Which meant I had to pay for extra top up, £10 if you pay by card, £20 if you pay by cash. Had never heard of anything like that before so was quite gobsmacked. Anyhoo, got onto head office and they refunded the £10 extra I had to pay.

It's the store policies, not laws as they told you

RupertRoker

thanks Jon 01 and mazza111 for your comments. I'm interested to see that other companies are doing this as well. Did Sainsburys/Phones4u tell you it was a store policy thing or try and say there was a law against it?

Jon_01

Sainsburys said it was to prevent other dealers buying discounted stock and reselling it.

I know some (if not all networks) have rules against box breaking.

RupertRoker

@Jon 01 I can see that Sainsbury's would want to avoid that. It's good that they admitted to it like that!

It's very frustrating though that the limits are set low. I'd like to buy a couple of cheap(ish) phones for my parents but I'm going to have to take my money somewhere else as CPW wont sell to me for 3 months.

Edinburghlass_2

Apple limits you to 2 iphones

SnowTiger

RupertRoker wrote: »

Thanks vikingaero. I suspect this myself. I'm trying to call CPW's bluff on this and get them to admit to it and stop lying to their customers. No such luck yet though!

The term illegal doesn't mean something is unlawful.

An example given by one of my dictionaries is that of an illegal chess move. I doubt there are any laws which cover chess moves.

I recall a BBC News article about an athlete who was accused of taking an illegal drug. The illegal drug turned out to be contained in cough medicine he had taken.

So, illegal means something which is against the rules. In this case the rules laid down by CPW.

RupertRoker

Edinburghlass wrote: »

Apple limits you to 2 iphones

I didn't know that. Do you know whether that applies to unlocked phones purchased directly from Apple or just to phones with a network subsidy (i.e. on a contract)?