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Stolen MBP

B

b18boosteddc2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 5, 2010
2
0
Hey guys,

Theres a guy at my school who's selling a late 09 mbp. I was planning to pick it up for my gf to use. Is there any way to find out if his MPB is stolen. He's selling it pretty cheap thats why im a little worry. Or should I just buy it? If so could i get in trouble for it, like can mac track it?

If anyone is wondering he's selling it for $500

Thanks
 
b18boosteddc2 said:
Hey guys,

Theres a guy at my school who's selling a late 09 mbp. I was planning to pick it up for my gf to use. Is there any way to find out if his MPB is stolen. He's selling it pretty cheap thats why im a little worry. Or should I just buy it? If so could i get in trouble for it, like can mac track it?

If anyone is wondering he's selling it for $500

Thanks
Click to expand...

For that price it's hot or somethings wrong. Hey buy it and maybe the owner will pay you back as a reward. Possibly if you took it to an Apple store for a repair, etc, and it was reported stolen you might find out then. Does anyone know if you do updates, etc can apple find you? I'm guessing not.
 
You have http://appleserialnumberinfo.com/ but the owner must have reported it...
I don't think Apple can track it, at least... without a court order :) In EU even the IP is private data, hence I doubt Apple can track anything without a judge involved (which in that case... it means the owner has gone to the police), and I don't think Apple has the time to verify all reported stolen Apple products plus track them...

Anyways... I think that the best is that you ask for proof of purchase. If the owner is the real one... he should have a ticket or something ;) to prove you wrong.
Otherwise... yes, I would say 500$ is very cheap.
 
It basically comes down to morals/ethics and if you're willing to take the chance on a potentially stolen MacBook Pro. Even if it is stolen, Apple won't do anything even if you brought it in for repair and the notes in iLog has a note saying "this computer is stolen" in all capital letters. Apple supports the hardware, not the person.
 
wschutz said:
You have http://appleserialnumberinfo.com/ but the owner must have reported it...
I don't think Apple can track it, at least... without a court order :) In EU even the IP is private data, hence I doubt Apple can track anything without a judge involved (which in that case... it means the owner has gone to the police), and I don't think Apple has the time to verify all reported stolen Apple products plus track them...

Anyways... I think that the best is that you ask for proof of purchase. If the owner is the real one... he should have a ticket or something ;) to prove you wrong.
Otherwise... yes, I would say 500$ is very cheap.
Click to expand...

If the guy is selling it for $500, he is not the one who purchased it....
 
Maybe someone just wants to sell one for cheap?

The best way is to turn it on, check it out… most thieves probably don't bother reinstalling the OS, especially ones at school. Now if this is on Craigslist or something, I'd be suspicious.
 
sounds legit...


you should only pay by money gram or western union....


on a serious note, ask for a reciept....its pretty new, he should have a reciept of some type of proof of purchase, other then that....call and see who its registered too.

simple.
 
If he is selling with the power cord and install discs I'd be ok with the purchase.
 
b18boosteddc2 said:
Hey guys,

Theres a guy at my school who's selling a late 09 mbp. I was planning to pick it up for my gf to use. Is there any way to find out if his MPB is stolen. He's selling it pretty cheap thats why im a little worry. Or should I just buy it? If so could i get in trouble for it, like can mac track it?

If anyone is wondering he's selling it for $500

Thanks
Click to expand...

Offer to NOT turn him into the police in exchange for the laptop, yeah, that'll work :cool:

Seriously, yeah, sounds fishy to me. Get the serial number if possible?
 
what size screen? if its 13 inch $500 might be ok depending if he bought it for $999 (lets say refurb) and used it for almost a year...
 
hey sup guys. So i finally saw the mbp in person today. he failed to mention that the glass screen was cracked and the ssd hard drive was not working. I plugged in my hard drive from my mbp and it functions fine. the screen seems to work fine with the crack on the glass.

He has the charger and disc.
 
If you don't care about the warranty and don't mind a possibly inferior quality screen you can get a screen replacement pretty cheaply from a third party repair shop ($100-200). You can get a replacement HDD cheaply too although an SSD is more expensive. Overall if you are sure nothing else is wrong, it's not a bad deal.
 
If it's just a crack on the glass (and not the screen itself), that's a pretty cheap repair; just need to buy a new piece of glass. That's only $70 from PowerBookMedic. A heatgun would be handy to remove the old glass.

As with the SSD, is that a stock SSD? If so, that should be covered under warranty seeing it's a late 2009 model and it would still be in the first year of warranty.

So if it's the glass and not the panel that's broken, you can have that fixed and then take the computer to Apple to have the SSD replaced. Remember to fix the glass before taking it to the store. If we're talking about a new display panel, then forget it.
 
On a side note, how does using a stolen laptop sit ok with you and you actually feel ok with saying so in a public forum? Do you steal whatever you need from stores when the clerks' backs are turned too? Is it *really* just a matter of "not getting caught"? I'd hope there's more to it than that.
 
lumine01 said:
On a side note, how does using a stolen laptop sit ok with you and you actually feel ok with saying so in a public forum? Do you steal whatever you need from stores when the clerks' backs are turned too? Is it *really* just a matter of "not getting caught"? I'd hope there's more to it than that.
Click to expand...

What if there's no way for you to prove that the laptop was stolen and no way for you to give it back to its rightful owner? Then is it wrong to use the laptop that you think might be stolen? You could argue that it would be wrong to refuse to use the laptop in this case, because the laptop would then go to waste.
 
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