Hi all! I’m coming here to ask this question because I’ve been getting contradictory information elsewhere and I’m hoping that I can find someone impartial who knows the answer.
Here’s the long story – I bought an iPhone on craigslist, which I have now learned isn’t really something you can do. I’ve been doing it for years, buying and selling, but apparently recently, just seeing the other user sign out of his iCloud account isn’t enough to be confident that the phone is legitimate and functional. So, the price was reasonable, not a “fell off the truck" bargain, so Price didn’t raise any red flags for me. After using the phone for two weeks, it stopped working on the network (cricket, which is an AT&T subsidiary), and I was informed by their technical support that the phone had been “blacklisted as stolen“.
So, I attempted to get back in touch with the seller, with the knowledge that there was very little chance of that happening. That was proven correct, as I’ve gotten no response whatsoever from that avenue.
I went on eBay and found that there are services that will unblock your phone if it has been blacklisted in that way. While I know this is sketchy, I don’t know what other option I have other than take the hit and call it a loss of many hundreds of dollars. So the phone was removed from the blacklist successfully, but now I find out that it also has an unpaid balance on AT&T.
So now I’ve put together the entire purchase scenario – the seller obviously signed up for a new phone service on AT&T, most likely using fake financial information if I head to bet, which included a financed iPhone. Then he turned around and sold that iPhone pretty much immediately and disappeared into the mist.
The eBay provider who removed the block from the phone says that if I buy an RSIM chip, that will solve my problem and I will be able to insert my normal cricket Sim card into the phone. While I’m already quite deep into this, I don’t want to get too much deeper so I’m trying to see how likely that is to be the case or if he is lying to me.
What’s my best bet here? I understand that with the current situation on the phone, it’s probably usable on other networks around the world, and possibly even other networks in America. But not AT&T or cricket. I don’t particularly want to switch networks, so my easiest solution may just be to sell the phone with the caveat to the buyer that it is blocked on AT&T. But I’d rather not pawn my problem off on someone else, even if they are going into it with open eyes. So do I have a way forward that allows me to keep using AT&T? Or is my best option to switch to a different provider? Or something else I haven’t considered?
Sorry for the lengthy post and thank you for any help.
Here’s the long story – I bought an iPhone on craigslist, which I have now learned isn’t really something you can do. I’ve been doing it for years, buying and selling, but apparently recently, just seeing the other user sign out of his iCloud account isn’t enough to be confident that the phone is legitimate and functional. So, the price was reasonable, not a “fell off the truck" bargain, so Price didn’t raise any red flags for me. After using the phone for two weeks, it stopped working on the network (cricket, which is an AT&T subsidiary), and I was informed by their technical support that the phone had been “blacklisted as stolen“.
So, I attempted to get back in touch with the seller, with the knowledge that there was very little chance of that happening. That was proven correct, as I’ve gotten no response whatsoever from that avenue.
I went on eBay and found that there are services that will unblock your phone if it has been blacklisted in that way. While I know this is sketchy, I don’t know what other option I have other than take the hit and call it a loss of many hundreds of dollars. So the phone was removed from the blacklist successfully, but now I find out that it also has an unpaid balance on AT&T.
So now I’ve put together the entire purchase scenario – the seller obviously signed up for a new phone service on AT&T, most likely using fake financial information if I head to bet, which included a financed iPhone. Then he turned around and sold that iPhone pretty much immediately and disappeared into the mist.
The eBay provider who removed the block from the phone says that if I buy an RSIM chip, that will solve my problem and I will be able to insert my normal cricket Sim card into the phone. While I’m already quite deep into this, I don’t want to get too much deeper so I’m trying to see how likely that is to be the case or if he is lying to me.
What’s my best bet here? I understand that with the current situation on the phone, it’s probably usable on other networks around the world, and possibly even other networks in America. But not AT&T or cricket. I don’t particularly want to switch networks, so my easiest solution may just be to sell the phone with the caveat to the buyer that it is blocked on AT&T. But I’d rather not pawn my problem off on someone else, even if they are going into it with open eyes. So do I have a way forward that allows me to keep using AT&T? Or is my best option to switch to a different provider? Or something else I haven’t considered?
Sorry for the lengthy post and thank you for any help.
