Wrong. Read my post two above yours. I bought Verizon phone for full price from Apple.com and it had to be activated. Neither Verizon nor Apple could do it remotely.
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Carrier **MODS PLEASE LOCK THIS THREAD**
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Wrong. Read my post two above yours. I bought Verizon phone for full price from Apple.com and it had to be activated. Neither Verizon nor Apple could do it remotely.
It probably would have been a lot clearer if you'd opened a new thread instead of resurrecting a year old AT&T thread for your Verizon phone. I imagine a lot of readers don't even get to your post until they've already waded through page #1 and gotten to near the end of page #2.
This stuff is clearly set up to reduce phone theft in transit.
As such if Verizon isn't willing to help you, you have two options it seems:
#1 - give the buyer your info
#2 - have the buyer send it back to you for you to activate and then ship it back to the buyer
Though at this point if I was the buyer if you won't do #1 I'd just sent it back for return under "item not as described"
This stuff is clearly set up to reduce phone theft in transit.
As such if Verizon isn't willing to help you, you have two options it seems:
#1 - give the buyer your info
#2 - have the buyer send it back to you for you to activate and then ship it back to the buyer
Though at this point if I was the buyer if you won't do #1 I'd just sent it back for return under "item not as described"
VERIZON SEALED iPhone 7/7+ bought inside Apple Store is UNLOCKED and does not need to be activated. It will work with any carrier. I can 100% confirm this.
VERIZON SEALED iPhone 7/7+ bought Apple.com is UNLOCKED but NEEDS to be opened and activated before reselling. The reason for this is when anyone buys it from Apple.com, the order requires Verizon phone and contract information. Once activate, buyer can resell without any issues.
BOTTOMLINE:
- Buyers - Ask the seller where the iPhone came from, in-store or online. If online, has the box been open and activated?
- Sellers - All iPhone ordered from Apple.com or from their carrier should be opened and activated FIRST before reselling. Or your buyers will be running into issues with putting their own sim card in.
(I've bought and resold during ever generations of new iPhones. I've resold 3 iPhone 7 ATT and I made sure to open it and activate before reselling.)
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Yep, any carrier iPhone purchased from apple.com and shipped directly from China to the buyer requires the account owner's last 4 of their SSN and billing zip code to activate.
Nope. There is no way to activate these phones without entering the account owner's last 4 of their SSN and billing zipcode.
I give OP credit for actually SEARCHING the forums for the answer before creating a new thread.
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AND doing this will activate the sim card and the buyer of the phone will be able to use your phone number to make calls to Russia.
True but you could log on immediately and suspend the line. Then when you go to reconnect it, you can input the SIM card you have in your phone.
Yes that is true for AT&T and TMobile but not for Verizon or Sprint.
Had the exact same issue. Luckily the seller of the iPhone gave me his zip & last 4 of SS# or I would have been dead in the water. The iPhone was bought on Apple.com at full price but tied to an AT&T account. The seller needed to go to AT&T to get a new sim after I activated the iPhone. I just put my SIM in after is was activated and erased the iPhone. All is working ok. iPhone should have been opened and activated prior to me receiving it.
You have 6 months to dispute with paypal.
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Dude, no - the whole reason this is done is to PREVENT THEFT. They aren't going to give you a new phone unless you can prove you were the original purchaser. And um, the buyer is not so they can't. And the original purchaser would know their own SSN and billing zip code.
Random people bringing in locked iPhones don't get new iPhones from apple. They could be stolen.
I personally have done this, and know several others that have as well. Apple doesn't/didn't care.
It was in a white/refurb box. But at this stage, any replacement Apple will give you will certainly be "new", regardless of packaging.
You, the seller just need to go to Att.com's unlock tool to unlock your phone remotely. You just need the IMEI number of the phone.
https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/#/
https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/#/
Thank you. That is exactly why I posted here. Did not see a need to start a new thread because it seems this is the issue regardless of carrier.
Thank you for all the responses. Since I shipped the phone, it would be just too much to have the buyer ship back to me. Especially since I charged a premium to deliver on release day.
I ended up giving him my information so he could unlock the phone and there were no issues. I think he was even able to do it without the SIM card inside since my own phone is still working. Not ideal, but this is why I have credit monitoring and regardless, I'm pretty sure Chinese hackers have all my info anyways. Lol.
Again, thanks for all the great responses. Lesson learned for the future.
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That only works for a phone that has already been activated on the network. Does not work for a new phone bought at Apple.com.
So pretty much anyone selling a "sealed" Jet Black iPhone 7+ will run into this activation issue, since they aren't (or very rarely) available in stores?
Annoying but definitely a decent scalping deterrent.
Annoying but definitely a decent scalping deterrent.
There are two different steps. Activating the phone and activating the SIM card. Typing 4 SSN and zip code on the screen activates the phone only but not the sim card. To activate the sim card, I had to click the link on att.com.
No, it damages only the seller's credit. Phone is ok but it can't be unlocked until the remaining balance is paid off.
No, it damages only the seller's credit. Phone is ok but it can't be unlocked until the remaining balance is paid off.
The end will be when you get the unlock code.Okay, this story has a happy ending
Summary: I called Apple last night. They had no idea what the activation lock was but they spent over an hour trying to help me. We wiped the phone from iTunes, swapped SIM cards among many other things. Nothing worked. She talked to her supervisor who also had no idea and suggested I call AT&T.
I called AT&T, they said I need to call Apple and hung up.
I called AT&T back hoping to get someone else at AT&T. The second AT&T rep also didn't know what the activation lock was. They tried manually adding the device to our AT&T account, force activating the SIM card, swapping SIMs etc. Nothing worked. He talked to his manager and suggested I try the process in iTunes. I told him we already did this during the Apple call. He gave me a activation hotline number and said to call in the morning.
It was getting late so I sent a message to the seller and requested that they call the AT&T number that was given. I woke up with a message this morning saying they tried calling but it didn't work. They asked for IMEI, S/N, and SIM number along with the phone number that I wanted to use. They said they would call AT&T back once they had this info. I replied back with the info.
While I waited this morning for an update, I called AT&T for a 3rd time, this time calling the activation hotline. The woman I spoke to was the most clueless of them all. She also had no idea what an activation lock was and didn't even know if I should be swapping SIM cards. After 5 minutes on hold she told me that I may have damaged the 6s because of putting the 5s SIM card in since "they use different technologies." I knew I was wasting my time so I thanked her and hung up.
About 30 minutes later, I got a random call from AT&T and the rep said she had the seller on hold. She wanted me to verify the number, IMEI, and account passcode on my end. She completed a fake activation but that didn't work. After I described to her what I was seeing on the screen, she said that this was an Apple issue and that she was going to hang up and call Apple with the seller still on the line.
20 minutes later, the AT&T rep called back and said Apple was useless(ha!). She said that nobody knew what to do at this point so the ebay buyer agreed to provide the last four of their social and zip code. Weird thing was that I never spoke to the seller and it was the AT&T rep that provided me with the necessary info. Kinda weird to see the rep play middle man.
I entered in the info, completed the iPhone setup, turned off the phone, inserted the correct SIM, and bam! The phone worked with our number. I thanked AT&T and sent a message and high rating to the seller. Super nice person!!! I also told the AT&T rep that 3 other reps and 1 Apple rep could help me but that she did.
We did an iTunes wipe of the device to ensure that it was truly fresh. I then submitted a unlock request as well since the seller paid full price for the AT&T version. Wife is now enjoying her 6S Plus Rose Gold 128gb and I win husband of the year award according to her.
The End
See the issue with resurrecting my old thread is people like burgman below have no clue what's going on. It's actually against forum rules to resurrect old threads. As the OP of this thread, I've asked mods to lock it.
If the thread was a few weeks old, cool. This thread has been dead for over a year. You could have referenced the thread in a new thread.
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