I bought a bad esn iphone 4...

Okay. I've been looking on Craigslist, eBay and Amazon for a couple weeks now, looking at iPhones and iPhone 4S's. I HAD a Droid 2 Global, and had just switched to Verizon last October... so I wasn't due for an upgrade until April of next year. The phone gave my all kinds of problems, like freezing, randomly shutting off, etc.

Nonetheless, I found someone selling an iPhone 4 on Craigslist. Turned out I knew (kind of) the girl selling it, she used to work where I work now, so pretty much everyone I work with now, my supervisor including, knows her. Figured I could trust her. I specifically asked about the condition of the phone, and if it had a clean ESN or not. She said it was pretty much brand new (it really is, still in the case, everything still plastic wrapped, still had the sticky plastic on the back of the iPhone 4. She said it had a clean ESN too.

So, we agreed I'd trade her my Droid 2 Global for her to sell, and give her $270 in cash.

She was pretty ditzy, a real blonde. I took my sim card out, even though the phone really didn't need it apparently, but she wanted to try it anyway...ended up putting it in wrong, and get the sim card stuck inside of the phone. Nonetheless, since I never had an iPhone, I didn't know how to activate it. She told me to just go to Verizon, and they would do it. Well, I reseted the phone, and then dialed *228, and tried to active it on my account. When I called, the guy said I had to contact her and get her to pay the bill, or try to get my phone and money back.

So right now, I've got no phone to call or text with. And a near-new iPhone I can only use for the basic things for over Wi-Fi. What the hell do I do now?

Accepted answers

bigtitan

You are out of luck unless you can contact the seller and have her refund your money. There is nothing that VZW or anyone can do to change this........

And as far as I know, the ESN checker on the VZW website only tells you if a device is registered to operate on the VZW network but that does not always correspond with the ESN being clear for activation. The ONLY surefire way is to call VZW, a process that takes all of 60 seconds once you get a rep on the phone.

If all else fails, you can sell the phone (while being upfront about the bad esn) and try to recoup some of your loss. There is a market for people looking for WiFi only "toys" and you might be able to get some of your money back. I had to do this not long ago in a similar situation and wound up being honest about the bad esn AND getting 90 percent of my money back int he sale....good luck to you.

All comments

rcschnoor

Driveshaft815 wrote:
Okay. I've been looking on Craigslist, eBay and Amazon for a couple weeks now, looking at iPhones and iPhone 4S's. I HAD a Droid 2 Global, and had just switched to Verizon last October... so I wasn't due for an upgrade until April of next year. The phone gave my all kinds of problems, like freezing, randomly shutting off, etc.
Nonetheless, I found someone selling an iPhone 4 on Craigslist. Turned out I knew (kind of) the girl selling it, she used to work where I work now, so pretty much everyone I work with now, my supervisor including, knows her. Figured I could trust her. I specifically asked about the condition of the phone, and if it had a clean ESN or not. She said it was pretty much brand new (it really is, still in the case, everything still plastic wrapped, still had the sticky plastic on the back of the iPhone 4. She said it had a clean ESN too.
So, we agreed I'd trade her my Droid 2 Global for her to sell, and give her $270 in cash.
She was pretty ditzy, a real blonde. I took my sim card out, even though the phone really didn't need it apparently, but she wanted to try it anyway...ended up putting it in wrong, and get the sim card stuck inside of the phone. Nonetheless, since I never had an iPhone, I didn't know how to activate it. She told me to just go to Verizon, and they would do it. Well, I reseted the phone, and then dialed *228, and tried to active it on my account. When I called, the guy said I had to contact her and get her to pay the bill, or try to get my phone and money back.
So right now, I've got no phone to call or text with. And a near-new iPhone I can only use for the basic things for over Wi-Fi. What the hell do I do now? See the above in red

Sounds as if she may have upgraded her phone, possibly left Verizon without fulfilling her contract, and has not paid any ETF.

For future reference, you can check the ESN HERE.

bigtitan

You are out of luck unless you can contact the seller and have her refund your money. There is nothing that VZW or anyone can do to change this........

demmo86rt

Dude, $270 AND a phone... even with a clean esn you got ripped off. But regardless, until you do what the rep told you, you're stuck with an iPod.

budone

demmo86rt wrote:
Dude, $270 AND a phone... even with a clean esn you got ripped off. But regardless, until you do what the rep told you, you're stuck with an iPod.

WOW, I missed he paid her also! Dont think she is as ditzy as he made her out to be. Actually she is rather savvy.

Driveshaft815

Haha, okay. Thanks for all the assistance. Been a bit busy, so I haven't been able to get back on, but...

1. Things got situated - I was lucky. I got on Wi-Fi at work, downloaded the textfree app, and was able to get hold of her and she called Verizon, got things fixed. So I was able to activate my phone before I left work that night.

2. I thought it was a good deal. I've been looking into buying an iPhone for weeks, and unless I get one with a discount through an upgrade or new contract, they were extremely expensive. Like, if I went through retail, for the 16GB iPhone 4, the full retail was like $499 or $599. On eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist, most iPhones are going for around $350 to $400-ish, used.

But yeah. Regardless, phone is working great. It was practically brand new, still had the plastic cover on the phone, the earphones, charger, etc. Great little phone, got it activated, and glad I went through with it.