Buying a contract phone second hand

Frenzy · 17 Oct 2011 at 23:10

I have a query that hopefully someone here can help me with.

I have been offered an upgrade phone by someone, a Samsung Galaxy S2.

The deal is good but the person in question is going back to his home country and I only really know him through my brother (work colleague).
If I were to buy the phone and he decides to report it stolen then where do I stand? Am I screwed?

I know they ban the IMEI if reported stolen and only the account holder can get this unlocked. Meaning I would be left with nothing, I don't fancy 4 years in jail for modifying an IMEI number either...

DIABLO · 17 Oct 2011 at 23:14

Pretty sure you'd be screwed.

Frenzy · 18 Oct 2011 at 00:10

Ah well, I didn't really need to upgrade the galaxy s anyway..

1st world problems! pfff

Myshra · 18 Oct 2011 at 08:46

He wouldn't have anything to gain by reporting it missing surely?

Frenzy · 18 Oct 2011 at 10:09

I don't know, how does it work?

edit, don't they do it to claim a new phone through insurance? If reported he will end up with money I gave him and a new phone....

hillbilly2 · 18 Oct 2011 at 10:11

Could you get him to sign something like a receipt to say he has sold the phone to you?

d_brennen · 18 Oct 2011 at 10:19

Myshra said:
He wouldn't have anything to gain by reporting it missing surely?

But he'd stop paying his contract perhaps? You don't own your handset until the contract is up

Frenzy · 18 Oct 2011 at 10:25

hillbilly2 said:
Could you get him to sign something like a receipt to say he has sold the phone to you?

I guess I could try that, I'm going to see if he meets my offer for it first. I know the most it will be is 240 but I'm hoping hell drop to 200 as hes desperate to sell. It is used aswell, granted only a couple of weeks.

Myshra · 18 Oct 2011 at 10:29

d_brennen said:
But he'd stop paying his contract perhaps? You don't own your handset until the contract is up

Original poster didn't say it was a contract or not - handsets are not really property of the network, it's a bit more complicated than this (and the contract value is a lot more than the handset anyway). If he's going home and he has a contract he can't drop it just by leaving the country (although it can be put on hold as long as you're 6 months into it typically) but if he did stop paying the bill then the handset SIM would likely stop working but not the handset.

Claiming a handset back via insurance goes like this:
Loser of handset claims to network it's lost/stolen (requires police incident number)
Original handset IMEI blocked, SIM blocked
Insurance vendor supplies new like for like handset (excess applies usually) once proof supplied.

While I'd usually avoid anything that looks too good to be true, if this is currently on PAYG and it's in decent nick this is probably OK.

Frenzy · 18 Oct 2011 at 10:32

It's contract which is the problem, he got it as an upgrade when he renewed.

d_brennen · 18 Oct 2011 at 11:20

Don't bother with it then