That time a buyback phone just stopped working 2 months in

Picked up a Samsung from a guy near Atlanta for $120. He said it was a carrier buyback with a clean IMEI. Phone bricked itself during an update and now I'm out the cash and stuck with a paperweight - anyone else get burned by these "clean" buyback units?

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wright.kevin4mo ago

Yeah that update thing is a known issue with some of those carrier buyback phones... they lock the bootloader down and then when the update tries to verify stuff it just fails. If the IMEI was really clean you might be able to take it to a repair shop and have them flash the firmware back on it, but with buyback units sometimes the hardware itself has been tampered with. Next time ask about the original carrier and check if there are any update restrictions before you hand over cash.

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terryb114mo ago

Did you buy it off Facebook Marketplace or one of those reseller sites? @wright.kevin is right about the bootloader issue - Ive seen this pattern way too often with cheap phones. Its like buying a used car that was in a flood and they just cleaned up the seats, you know? These carrier buyback units get passed around so much that nobody really knows what happened to them before. The whole system is broken when people can flip broken phones as "clean" and theres zero protection for the buyer. This is just how cheap electronics work now - you save 50 bucks upfront but end up paying more in frustration when it dies a few months later.

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