I bought an 02 Iphone... NOW IM WORRYED

[Anonymous]

hi all im looking for a little reasurance... im an 02 PAYG customer... i have bought an Iphone 3GS from an o2 customer that sold it on ebay as an unwanted upgrade.. its sealed in the box and unused... the problem is i read of a scam where people sell there upgrade then report it stolen several months later for the insurance money...and the phone gets barred..
i got paranoid and asked for the sellers address etc and said that i wanted it so as i could re register the phone as being mine with 02... or just place it on record that i have bought the phone from them??
i have sent numorus mails requesting there address and the number that the phone contract is registered to but have had no reply's... funly enough before parting with the money i heard from them every day :).... is there a way i can re register this phone to me so they cant have it barred?? i managed to recover the sellers name and address through other items that they had sold and even have there 02 number as it was on an item..
any help greatly appreciated as i havent even opened the phone as im too worryed

[adamtemp64]

welcome to the forums.

This is very hard to comment on.

But I would get it activated on the system in itunes and register it there for warranty etc in your name as soon as possable and keep all info from ebay and paypal regarding the item.

What is the sellers feedback like? as that wuld point out the reputation they have.

But if down the road the want to report stolen not a lot you can do apart from involving ebay police etc.

[Anonymous]

ok... there feedback looks ok... and i have let them know i have all there detales... the thing is it hadn't occoured to me what a huge loophole this is... there needs to be an IMEI register set up or something...

[jonsie]

You really need the owner of the phone to transfer the ownership to yourself as they will only accept instruction from the original owner. They may require this in writing.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't worry about this too much. o2 insurance wouldn't pay out if the seller claimed as they check to see if their sim has been in the phone at the time of loss/theft. In this case it won't have been, yours will have, so the claim will be declined.

For the seller to report this phone stolen and actually get it barred he would need to get o2 customer services to fill in a form to have it manually barred. This is because the bar is normally applied via a signal sent to the sim. Again, the seller's sim won't be in the phone so they'd need to come out with something like "my phone has been stolen but I didn't have any sim card in it at the time so can you bar it manually instead of through the system". However, again, any insurance policy I've come across states that your phone must be connected to the network at the time of the incident i.e. with the sim in it.

[perksie]

ok... there feedback looks ok... and i have let them know i have all there detales... the thing is it hadn't occoured to me what a huge loophole this is... there needs to be an IMEI register set up or something...

There is here:

http://www.checkmend.com/uk/

[Anonymous]

i did a report on there and it checks out as clear... the thing is im worryed that they could report it in a few months time...

[adamtemp64]

canwefixit


I thought that there was an IMEI bar to prevent any sim being used and that is how they are bared not just a sim bar?

[Anonymous]

Yes, it's the IMEI bar I'm referring to.

The way it works is that when you report a phone lost/stolen o2 will apply the IMEI bar through their system, they don't select what handset they're barring, it automatically picks for them based on where it thinks the sim card currently is. So if the seller simply asked for their handset to be barred it would block the phone that their sim card is currently in.

If you want o2 customer services to apply an IMEI bar to a phone other than the one you're currently using then they need to send off a form for another department to do it manually. This can take up to 72 hours.

[Anonymous]

For the seller to report this phone stolen and actually get it barred he would need to get o2 customer services to fill in a form to have it manually barred. This is because the bar is normally applied via a signal sent to the sim. Again, the seller's sim won't be in the phone so they'd need to come out with something like "my phone has been stolen but I didn't have any sim card in it at the time so can you bar it manually instead of through the system". However, again, any insurance policy I've come across states that your phone must be connected to the network at the time of the incident i.e. with the sim in it.

If someone steals my phone, do u think they will keep my sim card in it???