I bought a Motorola Defy on line from a large looking electronics shop the other day and it arrived this afternoon.

made up although I was a bit surprised to see the battery not in a bag but there isn’t a mark on the phone.

I popped my sim in etc and started setting the thing up.

The first problem I encountered was there appeared to be someone elses email address in the device already and no matter where I went in the phone this email address was logged to most applications.

OK the phone is fine, works ace and I really like it so to save the hassle of sending it back, waiting a week for a refund then buying another I decided to erase the email address and just keep it only I can’t get the phone to factory reset. 2 methods and they both won’t work. via settings, privacy, restore… and by holding various buttons down and then tap the right lower part of the screen. No effect what so ever.

Firstly any advice of resetting it really, just to avoid postage, insurance, worry in case it never arrived and so on and then the potential of being messed about.

paid by paypal BTW.

Send it back.

Firstly plug the phone into your PC and see if the previous owner has left any mucky pics of his wife in there. Then try the xda developers web site, there will be a section in there for resetting or even flashing a new copy of android.

plug the phone into your PC and see if the previous owner has left any mucky pics of his wife in there.

Tried that as soon as I realised it may have been used previously! sadly, no mucky pics. 🙁

Phone now reset. Probably keep it even though I think people who do that are daft. I’ll try for a partial refund or voucher though.

Made up with the Motorola Defy to be honest too.

IP67 rated apparently!

You know this might sound daft, but you could contact the seller and ask them to send a new one, or just go out on the street and ask passers by what they would do….

Had the same thing with a friends ‘New’ iPad bought from the Apple store. Was setting it up and it already had someones clear.net.nz email address logged into the store !

You know this might sound daft, but you could contact the seller and ask them to send a new one, or just go out on the street and ask passers by what they would do…

And then do something else anyway.

Probably keep it even though I think people who do that are daft

Well you know you’re being daft, which is half the battle.

Only half, though.

Did you have fun on Facebook with their profile before you wiped it?

Either it bothers you, or it doesn’t.

If it does, send it back. If it doesn’t, hush and enjoy your “new” phone.

To quote the wise Randall, “shit or get off the pot.”

(Personally I’d be chasing a refund if a company illegally sold me refurbished goods as new.)

Years ago, Sony Erisson did a phone with a camera attachment you could stick on the end – T68i, I think.

I bought the camera attachment cheap online, it had internal memory and to my surprise when I connected it to the phone I found quite a few photo’s on there.
There were several of some bird in various states of undress. On the phone screen they looked cak as it was a really low-res colour screen, but once downloaded, they were OK quality 600×480 images. I reckon whoever took the pics, didn’t realise this and just sent the camera back without deleting his ‘trial pics’.

Orange did this to me two years ago.

I broke my contract phone, and had to fork out £200 cash for a new replacement handset (Phone was not insured).

The replacement arrived, but I could not activate it. Went back and forward with Orange for over a month, and still could not make the damn thing work.

Eventually discovered that he handset had been blacklisted, which is why they could not activate the handset. I asked Orange how a brand new handset could possibly be blacklisted, and it got worse! It turned out that the handset was not ‘new’, but had been ‘reconditioned’, by Orange. It had been previously blacklisted by another network before Orange got hold of it, so Orange could not un-list it for me either.

So, I caught Orange selling a reconditioned stolen hanbdset (Why else would it be blacklisted?) as ‘new’ product, for the full list price??

I reported them to the OFT, and have avoided Orange like the plague ever since!

I reported them to the OFT

what did they say?

I got a nokia phone from Orange which insisted it was on Vodafone as they’d apparently bought a ‘job lot’ that had previously been allocated to Vodafone and had the Vodafone firmware applied to them.

If you paid for a new phone, send it back
If it was a refurb, they didn’t do it very well but you got your money’s worth

my bet is – it’s a return from someone else that’s had to be repaired.

coolhandluke – On a separate note, keep an eye on the phone’s speaker too. My Defy had had the speaker break twice in about 8 months, so I can’t hear anyone calling me.

Saying that, it does come in handy when the boss rings… 😆

If your happy so be it.

I would be a little uneasy that the IMEI number might be “owned” by the original user/owner.

If this were to be the case and that IMEI number was blocked/barred you would be unable to do anything about it.

If it were me I would send it back.

Handset could have black listed for any number of reasons, not just because it was nicked. Reported lost for example.

my bet is – it’s a return from someone else that’s had to be repaired.

Or returned it within 30 days because they ‘didn’t like it’.

Handset could have black listed for any number of reasons, not just because it was nicked. Reported lost for example.

I wondered that; hard to see how it’d go from ‘lost’ to ‘in stock at Orange’ though.

Its not IP67 rated.

They put out press releases saying it is, but then withdrew it before sale. Try and find one reference to IP67 anywhere on their website.

Try and find one reference to IP67 anywhere on their website.

Page 67

http://www.motorola.com/staticfiles/Support/GB-EN/Mobile%20Phones/MOTOROLA_DEFY_with_MOTOBLUR/GB-EN/Documents/Static_Files/DEFY_UG_UK_EN_68004131004_v1.pdf