You have been watching online and see the cell phone you have been looking for at a reasonable price. You get a hold of the seller on a chatline. He seems like a nice honest person, all willing and ready to answer your questions. It was a pleasure speaking with him – what a gentleman. So, you make the purchase. The first mistake you made, and what you neglected to do, was to check him and his company out. You didn’t check to see if he had any violations on the Better Business Bureau. You didn’t go on Rip-off Report to see if the guy was shady, and you didn’t read the reviews about him and his company. I'm guilty of making that same mistake many times until I finally learned to do check out people and businesses before handing over money for a purchase.
The item comes in a few days. You open the box, and it’s a nice clean iPhone 10 with no scratches or dings on it. Everything seems perfect. This is the phone you’ve been wanting, to replace your old phone. Your phone has gotten slow and won’t download the newer apps. You charge it up and find everything has been restored back to factory settings, just as promised in the description.
When you looked at the description during the time of purchase it said the phone was unlocked, and that’s what you wanted, and the unlocked phone. You pull your SIM card out of the old phone and stick it in the new one and nothing doesn’t work. After fooling around with it for a while you get this bad feeling in the pit of your stomach. But you are not to be deterred, and immediately head down to your local AT&T store to get the problem solved. The representative tries it and can’t get it to work.
Then one of the technicians in the store tells you the phone can only be used on Metro PCS or Cricket. Not good, not what you were looking for. You have no intention of using a subordinate carrier. You’ve had them before, and they stink. So, you call around to see how much it will cost to have the phone unlocked. You get quotes that are all over the map and you really don’t know who to go to or trust, or what to actually pay. You call the guy who sold you the phone and let him know the phone is not unlocked. You ask why he said it was unlocked in the description when it wasn't. He tells you to go on his site to check the listing. The first thing you see in bold print is UNLOCKED. Then he tells you to go all the way down to the bottom of the page - and what the hell? At the end of the description section, there are two tiny little lines in small font and fine print that says, (Unlocked to Metro PCS and Cricket.) You get sick again, angry at the guy, angry at yourself.
You didn’t buy this phone from eBay or Amazon. You bought it from a guy with a small business and a big website. So now, you have extraordinarily little in the way of return protection. You call and beg the guy to switch the phone, which he will gladly do for another $40 more. All you have to do is ship it back to him on your dime and he’ll take care of it. But no, now you figure the guy for a sneak, a liar. You may never see the phone again if you send it back to him. By now you’re fuming. You hang up on him, furious. No way are you giving him another $40. You want to reverse the charges, but you paid him by money order at his request, your second mistake. Always pay with a card that’s protected whenever you make an online purchase.
If any business person or website wants a money order or a bank check, duck. You can reverse them, but good luck. It’s like a Federal Case. Always pay by card. You call around to friends and family looking for someone to unlock your phone, and there’s nobody. You try to figure a way to do it yourself but it’s all way too confusing. You go on Craigslist and find a young kid who will come to your house and unlock the phone for $20, and in the exchange, he will take your old phone. The kid comes. He unlocks it in five minutes. Sticks your SIM card in the slot for you and, viola, your back in business. Just be more careful next time and do your due diligence. The aggravation is just too much. The seller should have disclosed upfront that the phone was not unlocked to all carriers. If everyone did the right thing there wouldn’t be consumer advocates.
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