A Cautionary Tale

easy

I don't know how old GeorgiaF is, but I'm guessing not very, left school within the last 10 years. Which goes to support my view that education these days is worthless. She clearly has no knowledge of what is right and wrong, and no ability to read or understand contracts.

She's also mixing with the wrong people. What sort of 'friend' leads one into this kind of trouble.

Georgia my dear, I'm sorry but I can't see there is any way out of this for you. You will have to make good the prices of the phones to both your buyers and the phone company. You have shot your credit history down in flames, you might acquire a criminal record for this too.

thatsean

So, I'm going to leave the moralising because I doubt you'd want to know what I think.

You've committed fraud. If you have a cifas 6 then:
-no loans for you
-no bank account for you (expect the ones you have to be closed)
-no more credit, or phones that you can sell (though this is doing you a favour)

Its coming up to Christmas, get a job - there are lots of temp jobs about at the moment, and pay off your debt. And next time, don't think that your desperation is more important that other peoples' right to enjoy things that they have paid for.

(Sorry, there was a bit of moralising there, but you'll get over it)

thatsean

GeorgiaF wrote: »

I'm not feeling a whole lot of sympathy from these responses....i guess i deserve that....but surely there must be something i can do?

Of course there is. PAY for the phones.

neas

I would say the network would be well in their rights to do this. Even if not fraud.

If you get an Iphone 4 (worth £500 say) and don't pay the monthly line rental the network has to put off people from doing it.. i.e. rubbishing the phone.

I prob will come a bit under fire for giving some information but hey ho.

You have screwed up and you will lose money. The best thing to do would be to refund two buyers, get the two phones back and sell them on ebay as IMEI blocked phones or through other channels. I'm sure you'd get prob £300 each as if i recall correctly they still work in other countries just not on any UK network.

Either way you'd be down £400 instead of £1000. Then i'd work on getting a job or source of income to pay down the line rentals until your fixed period is up.

Basically theres no easy way out. The fraud bit.. well that should stay as you did try and defraud the network. So forget about getting credit (mortgage etc) for a good few years.

Guys_Dad

As has been proved by the Lord McAlpine case, twitter users' identities can be easily obtained . So can other sites such as Facebook and this forum.

Presumably Ebay knows who you are and, if lots of money is involved, then they might just get your identity from this forum too. If they did, your very helpful opening post is sufficient to get the police to arrest you for intent to commit fraud.

Stupid to have tried to rob the network.
Stupid to sell the handsets on Ebay when anyone with any common sense would know that they would be blocked for non payment.
Stupid to come on here and tell the tale.

I sincerely hope that this is a made up thread and not for real.

peachyprice

macman wrote: »

Losing your job before or after makes no difference-it does not invalidate your binding contract.

I didn't say it did.

But OP was asking if she could argue that she did intend to pay until lost her job to get out of the fraud allegation.

neas

This thread is epic:

The sheer brainpower and morality of the poster brings a tear to my eye

Silk

peachyprice wrote: »

I didn't say it did.

But OP was asking if she could argue that she did intend to pay until lost her job to get out of the fraud allegation.

If she was charged with Theft By Deception it might be a defence had she had a job at the time with an income to support the payments...however it seems thats not the case as she ordered them after she lost her job.....

GeorgiaF wrote: »

I lost my job earlier this year and have been slowly getting in to a worse financial position, and really needed to make some quick money to help me out, especially with xmas coming up, and a friend suggest it was "easy money" to get mobile phone contract with a fancy new phone and just sell it on ebay

banger9365

HA HA this is unreal ,it fraud end off ,
knock knock MR Policeman out side

Jimx26

GeorgiaF wrote: »

Hi All

I wanted to tell you all a quick cautionary tale from someone who has recently fallen foul of their own naivety when it comes to making a quick "buck"....please don't "Tl;dr" me either, as i'm trying to help here!

I lost my job earlier this year and have been slowly getting in to a worse financial position, and really needed to make some quick money to help me out, especially with xmas coming up, and a friend suggest it was "easy money" to get mobile phone contract with a fancy new phone and just sell it on ebay or through a cash converters type shop and just ignore the bills or claim it was a fraud as the operators spend very little time actually confirming this and just wipe the debt.....it sounded too good to be true, but i was desperate and so gave it a go....

I know already most of you have just face palmed at this...but i was desperate like i say, and that new 4G company looked to be desperate for new customers on their new tarriffs offering the newest phones for virtually nothing upfront, so i applied for a brand new 32GB iPhone 5. Not only was i accepted, but i was offered 2 of them! I couldn't beleive my luck, so took them both. I really wanted to keep one of them as the phone looked great, and i've always wanted an iphone, but i also saw them going for £400 / £500 on ebay so stuck them both on there and sold them for just over £1,000 in total!! I was over the moon as this really REALLY was a lot of cash for me right now.

This is where the trouble started. Within days of sending the phones to the buyers, they contacted me with furious emails about not being able to use the phones, and they'd been advised by some company or other that they had been blacklisted. They wanted their money back (which i'd already used to clear down some of my cred card debt) and wanted to return the phones. I tried to tell them there must have been a mistake as i'd never reported them stolen or anything, but they wouldn't listen and ended up taking a case out with ebay. Now ebay are telling me to pay the money back or they will close my account (i use ebay LOADS to make money here and there selling old stuff!).

I eventually ended up applying for a loan to try and pay the money back, which was refused. When i queried why, they could only advise i got a copy of my credit file, which i did (using MSE "see your credit file for free!" technique) and saw to my horror the phone company have put a fraud alert on my credit file!!!! A CIFAS 6 or something, which google (and a few posts on these forums) suggests relates to "first party fraud".

I am really, really struggling to know how to deal with this currently, and would really appreciate any help or advice with this if anyone managed to read this whole tale of woe....:(:(:(

Just in case the op tries to edit after the post by guys dad