Posts by wibble

3 days on: The iPhone users still to make a call

day 4, no connection

I along with every customer who bought one from their store in belfast on friday have still not been activated.

5 phone calls and many lies later, still no connection.

Call the store this morning to be told, it is out of their hands.

o2 have not even made an official announcement on their website, and on the news sites, are claiming that only a few people have been affected.

The o2 forums speak for themselves, more than a few people complaining on there.

http://customerforum.o2.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=3

Home Office discusses thief-proof phones

phone was fine, then it was blocked.

What about second hand phones?

Its a booming industry for ebay, and second hand companies like cex.

Even if you check the phones imei out on checkmend

http://www.recipero.com/recipero/products/checkmend/

and it checks out to be fine, after it gets blocked you have zero recourse.

With companies like cex you are covered, but what about ebay, gumtree & loot?

For the uk, the only way to safeguard buying a second hand phone and not ending up with a blocked handset would be for the government to introduce some kind of transfer of ownership document.

Like a car log book this could be in 2 parts, one for the new owner to send off and one for the old owner to send off.

This could help everyone.

This way the phone can be registered to the new owner, if the previous owner then reports is lost or stolen to try and blag one on the insurance the networks can then claim any outstanding finance from them.

Doing this would be very unattractive to criminals trying to sell the old phones in the uk.

Lets face it, countries like Africa and most of the 3rd world will never take the uk's blocked imei database on, there would be a riot as most of the phones in Africa would stop working.

the networks can only win from this, especially as most of these phones are used by kids for prepay.