iphone 4 (International problems)

[OMGitsShan]

1. If you told us what firmware version and baseband you have we could actually tell you if it can be jailbroken and unlocked. This would save you some hassle.

2. You can't blame people for being harsh when you add the word "SCANDAL" in your title and then it just turns out to be based on your anger. Once you calmed down - thats when you should have posted. Giving the facts and leaving out the dramatics.

 

[alangrehan]

In the UK it's quite simple, if a salesman tells you a product will do something and it doesn't then the product has been miss-sold and you can get your money back.

I live in the UK and if I had a £1 for every time some told me something that wasn't true in order to get a sale I'd have a pocket full of change!

I find it's a problem particularly with mobile phones. I text abroad a lot and I've been told numerous times when signing up to contracts that international texts were included when in fact they are not. I always make it a point to check on-line before I make a big ticket purchase only to find the sales person often spouting contradictory stuff when I'm making the purchase in store.

In fairness to the OP he got the advice of 4 different people. Most of whom had a vested interest in selling the product.

To the OP... I feel you pain but you have to understand the criticisms of the people on here. You are using this site now but the other posters frustration stems from the fact that in a couple of clicks a search on this forum would have told you that phones purchased in the US are locked to AT&T and that would have saved you all the bother in the first place.

 

[Geckotek]

It's interesting reading American's views.

Unfortunately the OP is from the UK where consumers have rights and he made the mistake of assuming that people had similar rights in other, supposedly civilised countries.

In the UK it's quite simple, if a salesman tells you a product will do something and it doesn't then the product has been miss-sold and you can get your money back. Salesmen are not allowed to lie.

As do we in the US. There are consumer protection laws as well. Also, I'm pretty sure what he was told was not an intentional lie, it was an ignorant mistake.

The fact that he checked with Apple as well and they told him the same thing would be more than enough to ensure the accuracy of what he was told IF he was in the UK.

Being in the UK doesn't protect you from ignorance. I'm sure consumers are often told incorrect information on a regular basis. Your laws don't prevent that, they just give more stringent requirements on the seller to return the product.

Unfortunately he was in the USA where 'Freedom of speech' seems to extend to salesmen being able to lie to get a sale. Caveat emptor in the extreme.

Not true at all.

The OP is certainly a bit of a drama queen but he knew nothing about the iPhone and did everything that, in the UK, would have ensured he had the correct information.

Once again, being in the UK would guarantee nothing. I agree, he did what he could and still received false information, it's not his fault. But stop acting like being in the UK is this magical place where nobody lies and all consumer interactions are some heavenly experience.

I guess he's learned the hard way why people outside the USA can't understand people from the UK. Basic rights that appear normal to others don't to Americans - but conversely, Americans can't understand views from other parts of the world.

You said the same thing twice, that's not "conversely". And I've never had issues with understanding most people from the UK. But your post had a bit of a pompous air to it.

 

[samcraig]

Perhaps the OP doesn't WANT to return the phone yet because he's enjoying it too much? Did anyone notice his first post. The bolding is from me


chris217
macrumors newbie

Join Date: Nov 2010
iphone 4 (International problems)
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

So perhaps it's not that he's too busy. Perhaps he's just reluctant to be without his iPhone. Maybe's he right in the middle of Angry Birds

 

[milani]

To the OP, if you can't return it (I'm sure if you talked to the right person you would be able to return it) why not just sell it online? You could probably get near full price for it, given that it is an unused device. At worst, you lose a little on it but you would probably make twice as much as the subsidized cost of an iPhone 4 on a local network.

More generally, I don't really understand exactly how or why the US iPhones are different insofar as they are locked to AT&T. In Canada, for instance, I can happily use any network by swapping SIMs - at least that is what I was led to believe when I purchased my device. Assuming that is true, then is it fair to assume that the US iPhone is somehow different in terms of its design, or is this strictly an OS-specific carrier lock?