I bought a sealed iPhone 5 on craigslist and worried.

[rgctx]

this is the dumbest thing ive read in this thread, besides the OP texting the seller. the envelope contained the sellers possibly activated sim card and other info pertinent to his original purchase. they will do the buyer here no good. and even if the sim is deactivated, it cant be of any use ever again. so who cares he took it. i would have too if i was the seller and if i was the buyer, i wouldnt have cared less. you are uninformed.

and if you really wanted to make a car analogy, its lets say he bought a used car and the seller left a personal item in the vehicle which he forgot about. since you paid already, you gonna be a jerk and not hand it over?

Who said it was a SIM ??? Not the OP

Like i said, why would you pay for something and then let the owner take something from you after you paid !! His documentation or account related items should have been removed prior to sale !

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

Who said it was a SIM ??? Not the OP

The OP did say it was a SIM. From the OP:

But when i tried to take the seal off after I had paid, he took this silver bad off of it saying I don't need it (i think it was a little bag that has a nano sim card and other instructions) and just put it in his pocket.

Allow me to direct everyone to the post #29 that should settle this entire thread:

i am gonna chime in here because no one has done so yet.

when you buy a T-Mobile, SmartTalk or Virgin Mobile iPhone, from, Lets say Walmart, the phone comes with a little silver envelope/pouch taped to the front of it. It contains the SIM card for the provider you bought it for and some other documentation. When you buy the phone, that SIM is registered to you as part of the sale. Your account is attached to that sim card. So he can sell the sealed iphone to you, but put that sim card into any other phone to use his account.

 

[C DM]

Who said it was a SIM ??? Not the OP

Like i said, why would you pay for something and then let the owner take something from you after you paid !! His documentation or account related items should have been removed prior to sale !

Oh, no, a seller forgot to detach the original purchase documentation way before giving the phone to someone and only did it right before handing it over (still before handing it over). In the high stakes world of random private sales this is a completely unbelievable or unheard of thing to happen. Don't people (who perhaps only occasionally sell something) know how to sell things on the same level that large corporate stores do? How could they not know something like that? The horror!

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If.

What if it was an electronic tag.

And if it was, what would happen? If the seller removed it before even seeing the buyer? What then? So many random hypotheticals that are kind of pointless, it's just silly.