The Curious Case of the Counterfeit Phone

[ralerin]

A woman comes into my Big Red US Wireless Company store last night with a certain shall we say...fruit flavored phone. This fruit flavored company (lets call it iFruit) also opened a store in my local mall several weeks ago and as such they are still finding their feet. I feel for them, especially since they opened right before the busy holiday shopping season.

Anyway this woman says that her daughter broke her phone (iFruit 5s) and that our insurance sent her a new one. The wifi on the new phone never worked right so she was going to take it in to the iFruit store for them to look at. Daughter tried to take out the sim card, phone screen shatters. Daughter goes "oh well mom you can fix it" and takes off for school in Colorado.

Mom takes it to the local iFruit store who look at the phine and go "uh...this is a counterfeit phone"

"What?"

"Uhm yeah it's counterfeit, we not gonna touch it, go talk to BRUWC"

"How's it counterfeit?"

"Uhm, the edges (sides of the phone where glass meets the metal body) are not square, they're kinda round."

"...okay."

Woman comes back to us and tells us the tale so far. Manager Candynommer* and I look at each other. The phone when taken out of the case is supposed to be a lovely slate gray back but the metal on the back looks too blue.

"If that's a counterfeit, why didn't they run the serial number on the back?" I ask.

Candynommer sighs and hands the phone back to the customer, saying that he can't do anything and that the phone looks fine to him. She would have to call the insurance and yell at them, preferably while in the iFruit store.

Woman is not happy and grumbles at Candynommer but then she leaves.


*Candynommer is so named because he adores sweets. A phone rep was at our store yesterday with a giant bowl of candy for the kids. Candynommer ate 3/4 of the bowl and left his wrappers all over the store. When our District Manager brought in chocolate for the store the week before that, I had 2 pieces while Candynommer polished off rhe rest...no word on whether the others got any. And before you ask: Candynommer is around 40ish years old and slim so I don't know where he puts it.

[Sapphire Silk]

So where'd she buy the phone? Your store or iFruit? Or did she buy it on the internet?

Sounds like the last if she got a counterfeit phone.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

Bare with me on this, because it is a lot of assumptions but;

I think daughter broke her iFruit phone, and went online and bought a new, nice CHEAP (fake) one, claiming to her mother that it was the insurance that sent them a brand new phone. Mom doesn't know much about technology, so she just shrugs it off and doesn't notice. Now that the daughter has broken it, it gets shoved off on the mother to fix, since daughter knows that the iFake is just that, an iPlasticBanana. Not the fun kind either.

<_< >_>

[ralerin]

The original phone was purchased through us. BRUWC ran a -very- popular promotion where if you traded in your old iFruit, you'd get a $200 credit. Problem with Fruit is that they never made enough phones so everyone who went to the store could get a new iFruit phone so they were doing a deal where you could "trade" the phone in online. They'd send you a little envelope for you to send the phone back to them.

Since they would send the phones back sight unseen and still get the credit, I'm not surprised that a few fakes would be sent back. However I'm confused at Fruit for not running the serial number on the phone as a double check thing; nothing the woman said told me that they did.

[Sapphire Silk]

It's possible Fruit DID run a serial number check and Mom either 1) didn't understand what she was told, so didn't tell you, or 2) DID understand and left that part out, hoping to score on your store.

I'm betting 1 because if I were doing 2, I wouldn't have brought the subject up at all.

Then again, I'm smarter than the average SC.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

So where'd she buy the phone? Your store or iFruit? Or did she buy it on the internet?

Sounds like the last if she got a counterfeit phone.

Bare with me on this, because it is a lot of assumptions but;

I think daughter broke her iFruit phone, and went online and bought a new, nice CHEAP (fake) one, claiming to her mother that it was the insurance that sent them a brand new phone. Mom doesn't know much about technology, so she just shrugs it off and doesn't notice. Now that the daughter has broken it, it gets shoved off on the mother to fix, since daughter knows that the iFake is just that, an iPlasticBanana. Not the fun kind either.

<_< >_>

I think we have a winner here. Wouldn't surprise me if the daughter bought the phone off a third party site online (auction site/free listing site for example) and didn't tell the Mom that she'd broken the original phone.

Wouldn't surprise me either if she'd broken the phone trying to swap SIM cards, knowing that wireless companies do trace by SIM card number. She's only half right: they also use an IEMI/MEID number that's not only located on the phone (found in the Settings app) but also on the back of the box the phone shipped in.

My iFruit 4 box has this number and corresponding bar code on the bottom of the box, as well as the serial number, Part Number AND an ICCID number. Same with the iFruit 3GS (and I still have that box packed away in the closet somewhere.) She didn't think that part through completely.

It's possible Fruit DID run a serial number check and Mom either 1) didn't understand what she was told, so didn't tell you, or 2) DID understand and left that part out, hoping to score on your store.

I'm betting 1 because if I were doing 2, I wouldn't have brought the subject up at all.

Then again, I'm smarter than the average SC.

I'm thinking number 1 as well . . . but there again we know that the average bear is a bit smarter than your average SC.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I'm familiar with the insurance company in question. They are downright horrible (and sadly are the ONLY major company the provides insurance for phones) but I haven't heard of them sending out counterfeit devices. But if she calls them either they can tell her outright that was never a claim or they can IMEI track it and find out what the hell happened.

[JetGirl]

Those at the Fruit Store are not allowed to give reasons why it is counterfeit and the reasons are often internal. Usually the serials are stolen from other phones.

[EvilEmpryss]

I was at an iFruit store getting my new 5s checked out when two other (separate and presumably unrelated) individuals came in with broken/malfunctioning phones. I don't know about the techs not being allowed to point out the counterfeits, but the techs who saw them at the store I was at pointed out the pieces that were not Fruit-branded parts and told them it is a common issue they're encountering with BRUSWC. The two I heard were a face glass that wasn't beveled right and an outer case edge that gapped in the back. I asked my tech about it and he explained what's going on.

When people send in their phones for insurance replacement, the BRUSWC is repairing the broken phones with non-Fruit parts and passing them on to the next person who sends in for a replacement phone. The BRUSWC (or the insurance company) can save money by not having to constantly buy replacement phones. When someone's phone craps out again, the customer has to do the whole dance again.

Because of this, when Daughter's 5s started overheating (a known battery problem with a certain manufacturing run of that model), I took it to the Fruit store for replacement rather than go through the insurance with my carrier (which is not BRUSWC). Since the phone was less than a year old Fruit took care of it right in store and I could be more certain it was a proper replacement.

[wolfie]

When people send in their phones for insurance replacement, the BRUSWC is repairing the broken phones with non-Fruit parts and passing them on to the next person who sends in for a replacement phone. The BRUSWC (or the insurance company) can save money by not having to constantly buy replacement phones. When someone's phone craps out again, the customer has to do the whole dance again.

Using 3rd party parts instead of OEM, with the consequence that if the customer has problems later their phone will be rejected by the manufacturer as counterfeit? Sounds like a fraudulent practice to me. After all, if I spend the big bucks to get the latest uPhone from Banana, I expect warranty repairs handled through the company I bought it from to be done with genuine uPhone parts from Banana, not "looks like it'll fit" parts from Billy Bob's Phone Parts and Bait.

[EvilEmpryss]

That's pretty much what I thought. There were two irate people who left the Fruit store that day, and both of them were going back to the same BRUSWC store for explanations.