iPhone Replacement Service - How?

[Tomato910]

Can anyone explain this to me.

My iPhone broke a few months ago, uninsured, would not switch on. As I live in quite a rural part of China right now, I didn't have access to any Apple service so I decided to open it up and see what could've gone wrong. Long story short I made the whole thing a lot worse and when I put it back I did not even put all the screws back in and the iPhone was slightly 'fatter' because of my shoddy workmanship. ANYWAY! I arrived back in the UK a few weeks ago and noticed this ad on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....838552&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_500wt_1156

He claims to have a friend working in Apple who can replace broken iPhones. I called him up, he seemed decent, won the auction, paid for the replacement. The next day I got an AppleCare box with prepaid postage. Put my iPhone in. Today I got a brand new iPhone from UPS.

Does anyone know how this works? I'm quite sure he does not have a friend working at Apple, and the price is below what the cheapest AppleCare sells for so I'm really confused!

 

[Interstella5555]

Can anyone explain this to me.

My iPhone broke a few months ago, uninsured, would not switch on. As I live in quite a rural part of China right now, I didn't have access to any Apple service so I decided to open it up and see what could've gone wrong. Long story short I made the whole thing a lot worse and when I put it back I did not even put all the screws back in and the iPhone was slightly 'fatter' because of my shoddy workmanship. ANYWAY! I arrived back in the UK a few weeks ago and noticed this ad on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....838552&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_500wt_1156

He claims to have a friend working in Apple who can replace broken iPhones. I called him up, he seemed decent, won the auction, paid for the replacement. The next day I got an AppleCare box with prepaid postage. Put my iPhone in. Today I got a brand new iPhone from UPS.

Does anyone know how this works? I'm quite sure he does not have a friend working at Apple, and the price is below what the cheapest AppleCare sells for so I'm really confused!

Gray market I'd imagine; he's probably just flipping internal components from different phones. Back when colorwarepc was just starting up they sent me back my iPod with a cannibalized motherboard from a U2 iPod...it happens, but if it works, well....

 

[JohnsiPhone]

Don't like the looks of it.... try it at your own risk..

 

[Interstella5555]

Don't like the looks of it.... try it at your own risk..

Did you read the post? It's already been done, the OP is just wondering how it worked.