bought 2nd hand iphone 4s and worried

lucyhappydayz

Hi its my first post on this forum although i am a regular browser on mse. I have bought a iphone 4s from a facebook for sale page. The seller delivered the iphone to my door and i handed over the cash, everything seems ok with the phone i am using it and conected etc and its all working perfect however the seller has now blocked me on facebook and i am worried that there is a problem or that its on contract and he is going to report it lost or stolen? I do have the messages in facebook where we discussed the transaction and the delivery of the iphone etc the messages have all been saved. I was just wondering if anyone knows where i stand. Should i go into carphone warehouse where i know he got the phone from and ask them about the situation. Thanx in advance x

grumbler

You are right to get worried. It's not uncommon for a seller to report the phone lost/stolen after selling it and claim on the insurance (it doesn't have to be on contract to be insured). This doesn't mean that this is always the case.
CPW have nothing to do with this and will not help you.
If this happens, I think police will be your only hope.

lucyhappydayz

thankyou for the reply. I'm hoping the phone wasn't on contract and isn't going to get blocked in the near future. I'm not worried about being accused of stealing as i have all the messages both public messages on the facebook page and inbox private messages for the transaction and have got photo's of the man who sold it to me.

grumbler

As I said it's irrelevant whether the phone was or wasn't on contract.

NFH

When a phone is reported lost or stolen, what checks are carried out to verify that the person reporting it is the owner of the phone with the particular IMEI number concerned?

ess0two

That sort of transaction,i would have prefered to collect from their property.

It at least gives you and address to return to if things go wrong.

grumbler

NFH wrote: »

When a phone is reported lost or stolen, what checks are carried out to verify that the person reporting it is the owner of the phone with the particular IMEI number concerned?

I think the main problem is that no checks are carried out.
It's a very absurd situation with mobile phones and I am surprised that nobody questioned the legality of blocking so far as there is no any mechanism in place for transferring the ownership and tracking it. Personally I don't understand why mobile phones are different in this respect from any other devices and what difference blocking makes in the first place.
Any original (or recent?) owner of the handset that had been using it on some network can report it lost/stolen to this network that will routinely block it without any question asked.

NFH

grumbler wrote: »

Any original (or recent?) owner of the handset that had been using it on some network can report it stolen to this network that will routinely block it without any question asked.

So the check carried out is that the phone has recently been used with a SIM card registered to the person reporting it?

cgk1

NFH wrote: »

So the check carried out is that the phone has recently been used with a SIM card registered to the person reporting it?

I don't think it's even that complex - the insurance register the IMEI when you register it, you then report it stolen and they tell the network to block it - this can take a few weeks so the phone can work for a while - the insurance company have no access to or even care who had a registered sim - as they are simply paying out for the hardware (I'm talking about hardware only insurance).

That's how I understand the system to work and am happy to be corrected.

Juzza12

Are you sure that they blocked you?

The reason I ask is that some people have security set high so that only their friends can message them, so when selling they will add people as friends and delete them after. I have done this myself.

d123

NFH wrote: »

So the check carried out is that the phone has recently been used with a SIM card registered to the person reporting it?

this was the case when I worked at T-Mobile, part of the procedure was to ensure the IMEI was either the original phone supplied on the contract or the phone most recently used on the account (if not the original or PAYG).

Whether it still is, not sure, haven't been there for quite some time now.