G’day,
A mere 6 or so years ago I used eBay to pick up a number of 2nd hand iPhones for myself/family. At that point, most eBay iPhone auctions were “individual” people selling their personal phone for whatever reason, alongside a handful of “businesses” that clearly were selling multiple phones they had procured for the purpose of resale.
These days, when you look on eBay, it’s completely flipped - most iPhones are from business entities, and there’s just a few individual sellers.
A few months ago I noticed that a lot of the businesses were using a feature of eBay to make their iPhone auctions appear to be better than they really were - The auction title would for example say “iPhone 6”, but when you looked at the item, it would have a drop-down box/s so you could choose the specifics - ie colour etc etc. One of these options would be to select the model of phone, and as well as “iPhone 6”, they would include an iPhone 4 in that list, at a fairly low price. As such, eBay’s “list view” would show that low end price - making it appear that the iPhone 6 (as per title) was very cheap.
I took eBay to task over this, and will totally claim the fact that that practice appears to have disappeared as a win to me based on a few hours searching today.
However… What I’ve now discovered is that most of these business entities that claim to be selling “new, sealed” iPhones, are in fact selling refurbs. The ACCC recently took a business to task over this exact practice - a refurb is not new. (My research today suggests that the refurbs are nearly all coming from Korea, with some sellers admitting this, and noting that for this reason the “click” sound cannot be turned off when taking a photo.) (Weird Korean law I’m guessing!?) The sellers indicate that there is no warranty from Apple, but they will cover it for 12 months.
I don’t have a problem with someone selling these phones, just with the fact they are advertising them as “new”, when they are in fact refurb. From the comments being left, most people are clueless about what they are actually receiving.
(Apple probably wouldn’t be thrilled by what’s happening… Seems the Korean refurb store has a leak!)
Seems it’s time to point out to eBay the fact this practice contravenes Aust Consumer Law…
cheers
cosmic