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How do people get away with selling unlocked iphones on Ebay?

S

stateofmind

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 29, 2007
208
0
Why doesnt ebay take action on this? I know its a big money machine but isnt there ethics issues? Almost seems like a "to good to be true" situation for the sellers.

There has to be some repercussions, right?
 
Who cares if they unlock the phone? It's not illegal or anything. The only reason that they sell for such high prices is because the market supports it there.
 
Because there is nothing wrong with it and people have been doing it with pretty much all gsm phones for years?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

when you purchase an iPhone with no contract, do they give it to you without opening the package or do they still need to activate it in store?
 
stateofmind said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

when you purchase an iPhone with no contract, do they give it to you without opening the package or do they still need to activate it in store?
Click to expand...

1st Gen, they gave it to you. 2nd Gen, they require activation in store.
 
stateofmind said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

when you purchase an iPhone with no contract, do they give it to you without opening the package or do they still need to activate it in store?
Click to expand...

Depends on what country they came from :rolleyes:
I'd suspect most have been opened and tested to assure functionality.
 
stateofmind said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

when you purchase an iPhone with no contract, do they give it to you without opening the package or do they still need to activate it in store?
Click to expand...

When you purchase an iPhone in the USA, it is always either sold in conjunction with a new 2-year contract, or else it is attached to an existing AT&T account whose contract is extended to 2 years.

To put it quite simply, there's currently no way to purchase a brand new iPhone in the USA without tying it to a contract.

Of course, it is entirely possible to purchase a used iPhone in the USA, and in that case (unless agreed to otherwise) any contractual obligations (in terms of service providers) would continue to be borne by the original owner of the equipment; the person receiving the used equipment would not be contractually bound to any service provider.

There would of course still be the issue of technological limitations which prevent the equipment from being used on some (or most) networks. But those would be technical, not contractual, limitations.

As far as countries outside the USA, well it probably varies from one country to another.
 
How do these ebayers get so much phones if they dont buy them from the store (since buying from the store will require activation). I assume stolen but I may be wrong.
 
stateofmind said:
How do these ebayers get so much phones if they dont buy them from the store (since buying from the store will require activation). I assume stolen but I may be wrong.
Click to expand...

Go to the store, sign up for a new account with an iPhone, cancel the account, sell the iPhone. That's what I did.
 
stateofmind said:
Why doesnt ebay take action on this? I know its a big money machine but isnt there ethics issues? Almost seems like a "to good to be true" situation for the sellers.

There has to be some repercussions, right?
Click to expand...
Take action against what exactly?
What ethical issue?
There are millions of items sold on eBay, why is this any different?
 
You can buy iPhone 3Gs without a contract, but it's really expensive. $599 and $699 for the 8- and 16GB versions, respectively. I believe you still have to activate it before you leave the store, but there's no early termination fee there.
 
stateofmind said:
Yeah, I think your right.

How would I go about getting a phone that I can unlock without it having to be activated? Can you import them?
Click to expand...
yes, get someone in a country that does NOT carrier lock them and have them send you one ;)
eg have them goto the Apple store or carrier store of their choice that sales the iPhone, buy the phone outright(will be bloody $$$$ as the US$ is so weak right now) have them ship it to you via some traceable method. You *MAY* get hammered for customs and taxes so have them use their best judgment on packaging :D

It is really that simple!
 
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