4 months ago i bought what i thought was a new ipad. it was sealed, even had unbroken plastic wrap on the outside box. it was a wifi/cellular model.
up until now i only used the wifi. but last night i decided to try to set it up with a sprint data plan, only to be met with strangeness. it would not work. so i contacted sprint, gave the imei number. to my horror they said it had been reported stolen. over a year ago (jan 2013). i thought there must be some mistake b/c it was not even open and i bought it from someone with over 1400 positive feedback. but they double checked, and it was flagged. after that conversation, i checked apple and the warranty expires in 2015, coinciding with the time i first took it out of the box and turned it on. it is my understanding that you get a 1 year warranty when first activating it, so that means the device was in fact new when i opened it.
as long as i can get my money back, i have no problems trying to get the device back to the original owner, but i don't know how. since it has been 4 months the window for filing a claim with ebay is gone. also, even if the claim was successful, all ebay would have me do is ship it back to the seller (which would probably flip it back on ebay) and the original owner would never get their device back. anyone have any advice? i don't feel comfortable owning something like this, and yet i spent $400 on it... so it was kind of expensive.
up until now i only used the wifi. but last night i decided to try to set it up with a sprint data plan, only to be met with strangeness. it would not work. so i contacted sprint, gave the imei number. to my horror they said it had been reported stolen. over a year ago (jan 2013). i thought there must be some mistake b/c it was not even open and i bought it from someone with over 1400 positive feedback. but they double checked, and it was flagged. after that conversation, i checked apple and the warranty expires in 2015, coinciding with the time i first took it out of the box and turned it on. it is my understanding that you get a 1 year warranty when first activating it, so that means the device was in fact new when i opened it.
as long as i can get my money back, i have no problems trying to get the device back to the original owner, but i don't know how. since it has been 4 months the window for filing a claim with ebay is gone. also, even if the claim was successful, all ebay would have me do is ship it back to the seller (which would probably flip it back on ebay) and the original owner would never get their device back. anyone have any advice? i don't feel comfortable owning something like this, and yet i spent $400 on it... so it was kind of expensive.