I got scammed on Swappa
I bought a brand-new, unopened Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 back in January this year. At the time, I needed a phone to develop Android apps on, and I was browsing through Swappa when this listing caught my eye:
At the time I thought it was a great deal, and the thought of being able to test apps on a foldable screen made me pick it up.
I only had the rational thoughts after I’d paid for the listing, so I contacted the seller and asked if the phone was legitimate. This was the (rather shouty) response:
The only thing I could do was wait and hope that the phone really was legitimate. And when it showed up, for a while I thought that it really was. It was sealed in the factory original packaging, with a pre-loaded Google Fi SIM card. I guessed the seller had gotten the phone from Fi as a promotion and was selling it on.
And all was well, for about five months.
The problems start
Then one sunny day in June, I noticed that my phone didn’t have reception. I was out on vacation in Korea, and noticed that the US eSIM that I had wasn’t getting any roaming signal. Thinking it was a simple bug with the system, I contacted Visible and asked them if they could re-provision the eSIM and enable Wi-Fi calling.
After a bit of back and forth, this is what they finally responded with:
Sure enough, when I looked up the IMEI, it showed up as blacklisted:
Of course, the seller stopped responding on Swappa, so I filed a PayPal claim. However, PayPal took so much time sorting out the claim that I thought they were trying to help out the seller at times. Despite being unresponsive on Swappa, the seller provided fishy “evidence” on the PayPal claim, saying ridiculous things like the phone not being blacklisted at the time of sale. (And?)
After a month of back-and-forth like this, PayPal told me that the only way I was getting a refund was if I submitted a police report:
The trouble was, I was in Korea, and I didn’t have reception because my phone had been blacklisted. To top it all off, Visible didn’t allow re-downloading the eSIM outside of the US.
I first ported my phone number to a carrier that did allow eSIM downloads outside of the US, and also supported Wi-Fi calling activations overseas (I have no idea why this isn’t the standard). Then I called up the sheriff offices and asked for an officer that I could file a report with. I’d like to thank the officer at the Tippecanoe County Sheriff for helping me out – he even sent the report over the Fourth of July:
Finally, after nearly a month since I first reported the claim to PayPal, PayPal closed the claim in my favor and refunded me the full amount.
How?
So how did my phone get blacklisted five months after the sale? And what can you do to avoid such a thing?
Well, as part of gathering evidence to submit to PayPal, I contacted Google Fi about the blacklisted phone, and this is what they had to say:
So here’s how the scam works:
- The scammer buys a new phone from Google Fi, backed by insurance
- The scammer sells the phone on used marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace and Swappa
- After the sale, the scammer gives some time to make the buyer think the phone is legitimate
- The scammer then claims the phone as lost/stolen
- Insurance gives the scammer a new phone to repeat the scam with
- Insurance blacklists the original phone, screwing over the buyer
This is a pretty clever tactic, because if you didn’t use something like PayPal and don’t have buyer’s protection, you’re absolutely screwed at this point unless you take the scammer to a small claims court or something. I was very nearly in this position because my buyer’s protection on PayPal expired a week after the claim was closed. If the scammer had been a little bit more patient then they totally would’ve gotten away with it.
And for the scammer, there’s literally no downsides. If they get away with it, they make nearly a grand and still get their phones for their next scam. If they don’t (like my case), they only lose out on the UPS shipping fees and the seller chargeback fees (if PayPal charges any). Which is probably why they did this with other folks, too:
Unfortunately, there’s no real good way of protecting yourself from scams like this, other than not buying used phones. I’m personally never buying a used phone again after this incident unless the seller is someone I trust. Phone insurance can go as long as the original owner keeps paying for it, and the used phone can be blacklisted at any point.
The massive headache I had to go through to get my US cell service back up while overseas was truly the worst experience that I’d never like to go through again. Don’t do what I did and pay a little more for peace of mind.
Update
PayPal banned me:
They initially told me that this was because I was accessing my US PayPal account from another country (yeah, I was traveling. So what?) but then refused to elaborate more when I explained I was out on vacation. I’m guessing the ban reason is because of the claim opened months after the sale.
I called them up and asked about an appeal, but they told me that it was denied and the decision was final. Very classy, PayPal.