Refurb phone with activation lock

[lee_lou2]

Hi. I have upgraded my sons phone to a ‘good as new’ iPhone 12 Pro Max. He has gone to set it up today but looks like it still has an activation lock on it. We’ve googled this and it says the previous owner needs to be contacted to remove this from their iCloud. What do we do now?  

[BrendonH]

Where did you purchase th phone?

[Christopher_G]

Hi @lee_lou2

Welcome to the community.

Was it bought directly from EE?

Chris

[lee_lou2]

I purchased the phone as a renewed contract from the EE website.

Sent from my iPhone

[lee_lou2]

Hi Chris. Yes it was direct from EE. I have live chatted with them this afternoon and they sent me a link and said to finish the process. This isn’t going to work as they suggested going through settings, but the phone setup doesn’t get that far.


Sent from my iPhone

[Christopher_G]

Thanks, @lee_lou2

I've sent you a private message to get some more information from you.

Please have a look and get back to me.

Thanks

Chris

[lee_lou2]

We have started the set up. Taken a photo of the swirly thing to switch all info from one phone to the next and then we get this on the new phone. 

[lee_lou2]

Hi Chris. I really appreciate you offering help. I am away on holiday at the minute, so the phone isn’t with me. My son is going to try and take the new phone and his current phone to our nearest EE shop tomorrow. I was just hoping this might be a quick fix. I have to say the live chat was completely unhelpful. 
If he doesn’t have any luck tomorrow, I’ll ring 150 when I get back. I’ve never had an upgrade that’s been so disappointing. 
Thank you so much.

Louise

[Christopher_G]

I'm so sorry, I've not heard of this happening with a good as new phone, @lee_lou2.

I hope your son manages to get it sorted. Please come back and update us on what happens.

Enjoy the rest of your holiday.

Chris

[Chris_B · Accepted solution]

@lee_lou2  If the the device is locked via a activation lock then there is no way around this.   This is a security feature for this very reason it stopped iPhone thefts. 

EE don’t know who the device did belong to so can get in touch with them to remove the device from their iTunes account.    You’ll have to contact customer services tell them this and get the device returned back to EE.   This should of been checked before it was offered for resale.      Just to add if the device is on your account the store will not deal with your son and there is nothing the store can do to help anyway