Sold a 2nd Hand iPhone as New From CPW

[iwgunter]

Went into CPW on Sunday and bought a "new" 3G iPhone. Upon getting homoe, I found it had already been activated and registered under someone else's iTunes account.

Writing to CPW to ask for some form of compensation [pref a free docking station]. Here's the letter:

Dear Sirs

iPhone Serial Number: ***********

I purchased a brand new 3G iPhone from your Upper Level Lakeside store on Sunday 13th July. I have always rated Carphone Warehouse with the highest regards and have bought a number of iPhones from your company over the past year.

The salesman told me that when I get home, I will need to activate the iPhone so I can use it.

When I got home I put my SIM card into the iPhone and found that it had already been activated to a “steveamartin” and it was asking for his iTunes account password. Upon closer inspection, I realised that I had been sold a second-hand iPhone. Also there was no shrink-wrap around the box or protective cover on the phone itself.

The phone itself is immaculate; I just don’t think that the underhandedness is appropriate from a company such as yours. I would have no problem buying a second-hand iPhone as long as there is a discount applied. If it were a car, it’d have lost about a quarter of its retail price just by registering it to a previous owner at new.

I therefore think that the best course of action would be to supply me with a free 3G iPhone docking station as form of compensation/discount for this incident.

Yours Faithfully

[locutus]

Have you seen the stickie?

iPhone 3G experiences, submit here

[iwgunter]

Yup, wrote on there about it too...

Does anyone know where I'd stand with this?

[buzby]

The PHONE itself may well be new and untouched by any other hand. The fact it has been iTues pre-registered does not make the handset any less 'new' in the eyes of SOGA. I'd be checking out the usage meters and call durations, if still 00:00:00, I'd say it was still a new device.

[iwgunter]

I don't actually understand how a phone that is activated and registered can still be classed as new. Surely, if the seal on the box is broken, let alone being registered under someone else's name, then it's not brand new.

It's very easy to just reset the call logs, in fact it's very easy to reset the whole phone, which they hadn't done otherwise it'd have needed reactivating.

[buzby]

Because the phone can be 'activated' using its IMEI code, none of this makes the phone any less new that it was - a typo in the IMEI can register the wrong handset, it doesn't mean the phone isn't new, simply the registration is erroneous It would hovever be up to the retailer to sort out the problem.