Blackberry Bold 9000 Problem. Need advice.

Activating BIS / Stolen BB

Sorry for the long post, but I just want to clarify some things. First background info:

I purchased the Blackberry Bold from a seller on ebay. I didn't know anything about blocked Blackberry until I encountered this problem. Anyway, the Blackberry is branded under O2. Meaning, when you first turn on the phone, the 02 sign comes up.

Before I purchased the phone from the guy, he told me that it was purchased from an independent reseller in Hongkong. He couldn't show me the receipt cause he said its been misplaced but he gave me a business card of the shop he purchased from.

Anyway, I tried applying for a data plan from a local phone provider here in our country in the Philippines. The service provider took down my IMEI and PIN to check if there was any problem with it. So they activated my data plan. After one week, I still couldn't activate the data from my phone but the service provider told me that my sim was already provisioned for data with Blackberry.

They couldn't give me an answer for one week. Until I went to see them at the shop and they finally told me that the phone was reported lost from another service provider.

My question is how could that be possible because when I bought the phone, everything was intact. Manuals and box and accesories. And even the imei of the box was the same. Also, is there a way I could check it online to make sure that this is really the case since blackberry is not that popular yet in our country. So I am hoping that the technical support here just forgot to configure something. And told me that its stolen or lost so they don't have to bother with my problem. The branding of the phone is an 02. Will it help if I get someone to call 02 and ask for the status of the phone. I didn't know that buying a blackberry phone was this complicated.

Thanks for the advice.

It was reported stolen or lost. Either you stole it, or the guy you bought it from stole it and then stole your money.

/thread

Yeah, there's really nothing anyone here can do for you. You're going to have to work all of this out with your carrier, O2 and RIM. That's about it. No one is going to come around here and have a magic pill for getting a lost or stolen phone working. Sorry. Good luck with everything.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Originally Posted by pchanj

Activating BIS / Stolen BB

Sorry for the long post, but I just want to clarify some things. First background info:

I purchased the Blackberry Bold from a seller on ebay. I didn't know anything about blocked Blackberry until I encountered this problem. Anyway, the Blackberry is branded under O2. Meaning, when you first turn on the phone, the 02 sign comes up.

Before I purchased the phone from the guy, he told me that it was purchased from an independent reseller in Hongkong. He couldn't show me the receipt cause he said its been misplaced but he gave me a business card of the shop he purchased from.

Anyway, I tried applying for a data plan from a local phone provider here in our country in the Philippines. The service provider took down my IMEI and PIN to check if there was any problem with it. So they activated my data plan. After one week, I still couldn't activate the data from my phone but the service provider told me that my sim was already provisioned for data with Blackberry.

They couldn't give me an answer for one week. Until I went to see them at the shop and they finally told me that the phone was reported lost from another service provider.

My question is how could that be possible because when I bought the phone, everything was intact. Manuals and box and accesories. And even the imei of the box was the same. Also, is there a way I could check it online to make sure that this is really the case since blackberry is not that popular yet in our country. So I am hoping that the technical support here just forgot to configure something. And told me that its stolen or lost so they don't have to bother with my problem. The branding of the phone is an 02. Will it help if I get someone to call 02 and ask for the status of the phone. I didn't know that buying a blackberry phone was this complicated.

Thanks for the advice.

Rather than just tell you "there is nothing you can do," I thought I would drop a note saying what you could do (not much, but it's something).

If the item *IS* stolen and you and the reseller (and/or eBay, PayPal, etc or any other place you might have dealt with, INCLUDING your bank if you didn't use PayPal) are not able to come to some kind of agreement and RIM (apparently) can verify this, you need to notify your local police (not sure what their capacity/ability would be in the Philippines) and THEN, if you have a trade agency (we have the Federal Trade Commission here) because it appears someone is trafficking in stolen goods. If they are not willing to help you (the reseller) or "make good" on it, you can fairly assume that the person on eBay has done this a number of times before. Sometimes good people get caught up in bad situations (such as accidentally taking possession of a stolen item when buying used electronics and such) and *MOST* are willing to work something out, but don't give up and don't give in. Important: Be polite in your dealings so that YOU don't come across as the raving psychopath just trying to get something for free (which SOME will assume if you start out sounding like a mad man, which, from the tone and professionalism your note on here, I doubt will happen). File claims and be persistent - the "bad guys" depend on people giving in just because they are in a different country, but there is (almost) always something, however small, that CAN be done to try and improve your immediate distress.

Your service provider also needs to cancel your data plan and not charge you for something you are not using. If you can get a different (and, hopefully, legitimate) device in the interim, I suggest you do so just so that you can have SOME functionality that you were expecting to have with the device you just bought.

Let me know if this helps and what happens as I would like to know.

Regards,

M