Cell Phone

Brian Moody

New Member
Jurisdiction
Illinois
My spouse and I bought a cell phone from a private individual on January 6th, 2018. Prior to the sale, we confirmed with the seller that she had reset the phone to factory settings and that it was ready for activation. On January 8th, 2018, I went to activate the phone at the Sprint store and the customer service rep informed me that the phone cannot be activated due to the prior owner being in a delinquent status on her account. They went on to inform me that until the delinquent account was satisfied, Sprint could not release the phone for activation.

My wife and I made multiple attempts to contact the previous owner and when we pressed her to pay the delinquent account or refund our money, she changed her position stating she sold the phone for a friend that that it was not her account.

Through a couple additional conversations with Sprint Customer Service, I was able to verify that she is the owner of the account and that phone is tied to her account until she satisfies the delinquency, however, since I am not on her account, I have this information through conversation and nothing in writing from Sprint. In addition, we did escalate the issue with Sprint and they advised that they cannot release the phone until the bill is paid.

With this situation in mind my wife and I feel our only recourse is to work through the small claims process. The seller is not taking responsibility and has refused to refund our money. She sold us a phone that is essentially unusable and cannot be activated. We feel she fraudulently represented the phone and should have accountability to right this situation.

Based on what I have above, what advice can you provide? What steps should we be taking or additional documentation or questions should we be asking?

Thank you in advance.

Brian Moody
 
Going to small claims to obtain a judgment against a dead beat will only be wasting your time and losing more of your money.

You don't get money when you prevail in small claims.

The court won't collect the money for you.

You obtain a pretty IOU from the court declaring Deadbeat owes Winner money.

Then you, Winner, must endeavor to collect the IOU.

The court doesn't help you collect.
The court already made its money off of you, so it doesn't care.

Small claims courts only APPEAR to work on court TV shows because those shows pay you.

You might try to get on one of those shows, because you'll receive an all expenses trip to the Chicago, Hartford, CT, or Los Angeles, CA (depending on the show), meal allowance, hotel paid, clothing allowance, r/t airfare, airport parking, or limo, and limo to your hotel.

If you sue the deadbeat, it'll only make you more frustrated and leave you empty.

The lesson here is don't buy ANYTHING from SCAMMERSLIST, especially mobile phones.
 
Based on what I have above, what advice can you provide?

Toss the phone in the trash and learn a life lesson from the school of hard knocks.

While I have made many hundreds of successful transactions on Craigslist over the past 20 years I have to agree with Army Judge that you have been scammed and, unless you are willing to pay the filing and process service fees for small claims court and go through the process, you might as well just chalk it up to experience and get over it.
 
She spent the money right after you gave it to her. You'll never get it back.
You may win in small claims. You just need to decide if it is worth it and be prepared to walk away with nothing for winning.
 
Your case depends on one of the following being true:

The seller represented to you that no balance was owed or contractually agree that any balance would be paid.

All you told us is that you verified the phone was reset to factory settings, but that's not relevant. At the end of your post, you wrote that you "feel she fraudulently represented the phone," but it's not clear what that means.

Another possible issue: Why didn't you verify with the cell service provider that the phone could be activated? A prudent buyer would have done that.
 
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