Lillian bought what she thought was a new phone from an eBay seller with a lot of great feedback. The longer she has it, though, the more evidence she finds that it’s probably not new. Sometimes buying electronics off of eBay is like slowly peeling an onion.

I don’t buy a lot of electronics online, so I’m not too aware of what to look out for when it comes to scams.

I just bought a cellphone off of ebay and it was totally a steal: a “new” LG Chocolate off of a seller with near perfect feedback, thousands of past customers, had a great page that guaranteed a 30 day warranty, begging to “contact seller before leaving negative feedback” etcetc. Quick and courteous customer service.

After a little shipping dilemma, I finally got my phone two weeks later, and right off the bat I identified that it wasn’t in the same type of box you’d get if you bought a real phone off of the verizon dealer. not a big deal, or so it seems. Well this “new” phone, has a few light scratches on the inner screen, nothing to worry about in my opinion, besides that it was essentially new looking and worked fine. In the battery compartment though, the little dot with the fine red lines to detect whether its been dropped in water- it’s just white. So either someone just peeled it off, or it’s been dropped in water. but my phone works…? I brushed that off.

Now it’s been two days since I’ve had it, and I’m really enjoying it. But when browsing through the mobile web I look at “MyLinks”, and this is what set me off: a bunch of spanish sites I’ve never visited, and shocker-porno sites. As I am aware, the MyLinks are saved in the phone’s memory rather than on the virtual web, not to mention no one in our plan can read Spanish to save their lives. So putting these all together, this phone has been used, or refurbished. Not to mention the non-lg charger that was part of the package just shattered in my hand upon first use.

Sell the Consumerist has quite a few stories of other users finding porn or such in their supposedly “new” merch. What do you guys think, is all of this worth returning because essentially I’ve been deceived into buying a used phone marketed as new?

Uh, yes. YES. Are you just trying to tease us? The box wasn’t an official LG box, the charger wasn’t LG-branded, the phone is scratched, the water damage sticker is missing or damaged with water, and there is evidence on phone’s memory that it’s been used by someone besides you.

Read up on eBay security here. To initiate a claim, go here: resolutioncenter.ebay.com

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