Blacklisted Phone

[Iamnewhere2020]

Hi everyone,

Here's my problem: on May 1 I won an android phone (Samsung Galaxy A40) at auction from an eBay member.

I was enthusiast and on top of that the phone arrived just two days after winning it at auction.

Two weeks later I sold it to another eBay member who, after approximately 4 months, disputed the transaction occurred on PayPal saying that the phone had been blacklisted.

Paypal ruled in favour of the buyer issuing a refund to the buyer but they had at least the decency to get the buyer to return the phone to me.

As you can imagine, I presented the case to the seller who blatantly dodged all my questions.

As you know eBay cannot step in as :

1) the transaction is older than 30 days old and the item is no more covered by eBay Money Back Guarantee;

2) after 120 days eBay archives the details about any item sold on their platform.

Ebay suggested contacting the local law enforcement as they are unable to help out.

Now, since I bought the phone using my debit card, I think PayPal won't be able to step in but I sent them a message requesting to adhere a dispute but they are yet to get back to me.

Now, I have the details of the seller, the IMEI number of the phone and the phone itself. Do you know if Vodafone can step in if I provide them with all these information?

[AnnS]

Hi @Iamnewhere2020 

Vodafone won't be able to give you or PayPal any information, if they did they would be in serious breech of GDPR data protection regulations. This is going to be between you and the seller.

It's dishonest sellers like the one you met who lets the site down for honest sellers, it's likely you encountered a common second hand sales scam where the seller who couldn't care less about anyone else sells a working phone and then reports it as lost or stolen, makes an insurance claim and has double the money, that makes the phone you purchased the property of the insurance company who took the risk.

It's unfortunate you didn't use a credit card, you may have been able to raise a dispute with the card company and got your money back that way.

[BandOfBrothers]

@Iamnewhere2020 

Vodafone UK won't engage with you over this which is a private sale between you and another party.

You can check with your bank to see if they can help however they may not.

You may have to chalk this one up to a bad experience

I wish you all the best with this. .

[hrym]

I presume you have actually tried putting a SIM in the phone to check that it is blacklisted?   The other posibility would be that it's in fact network-locked and I think to should be able to get that sorted.

Your dispute would, of course, have had to go through eBay and/or PayPal.   As far as I'm aware, card issuers don't cover PayPal transactions, so using a credit card probably wouldn't have helped in this case.

[Iamnewhere2020]

Yeah it's 100% Blacklisted. When I bought it from this seller, he had listed it as new and locked to Vodafone. When I got it, I tested it with a different sim card and surprisingly, it worked perfectly. Now that I got it back after the dispute, when I insert another sim card it says "not registered on network". Furthermore, I ran a check on IMEI.info and guess what....it's blacklisted.