Find My iPhone Activation Lock in iOS 7 cant contact previous owner what else can i do?

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Let me make it simple. Six days ago at my wife's work place elderly couple looses iphone. They come back 10 minutes later and can't find it and nobody had seen it. One hour later police car comes by and guess what... Iphone is found in one of the employee's cars. Employee is fired few minutes later and if somebody is going to argue with value of that service or Apple iphones they can go and enjoy (you know what I mean) themselves'. Logistics will take time to work out - find my iphone activation lock - priceless. Yes few people will get conned. Yes few people will get locked out. To me it is worth it, to whoever it does not vote with your money - stop buying Apple and I will not take it as a threat - I will personally take it as a promise. But I know not to get my hopes up...

See that's where your whole premise breaks down. Many people do not report stolen devices to the police. And has been pointed out, even if they did, the police would have to then submit the information to a central database that was accessible by all police departments all over the world. Or are you suggesting that somehow everyone who owned an Apple device would "get the word" that if their device was stolen, they should report it to Apple?

Seriously? You are going on and on telling us how people who own Apple devices don't know about Activation Lock, and don't know to turn off Find My iPhone before legitimately selling it. So, how would all of those same people who don't even know how to prepare a phone for resale know to report a stolen device to a specific Apple website or to call a specific Apple service to report that a device was stolen.

Being uninformed is being uninformed, and no matter which way you cut it, there will be thousands of people who whine and say "I didn't know"....and then will want somone else to fix an issue caused by their own ignorance, negligence, or laziness. How is anyone supposed to distinguish those traits from criminal ones? Impossible.

I had the same problem with the iPhone 4 given to me by my sister.

She had provided me with her apple id and password that works perfectly fine on icloud but thing is, It tells me during activation that I cannot use the apple id i provided to activate the iphone. What's wrong?

LoisMD23 wrote:

I had the same problem with the iPhone 4 given to me by my sister.

She had provided me with her apple id and password that works perfectly fine on icloud but thing is, It tells me during activation that I cannot use the apple id i provided to activate the iphone. What's wrong?

You don't need to and should not use her AppleID to use the iPhone.

Settings > iCloud. Turn off FindMyiPhone (using her AppleID & Password).

Settings > General > Reset > Erase all settings.

Then Setup as new.

this is my problem. I cant go through activation. i am being asked to enter apple id used to activate iphone and so i had to enter the previous owner's id and password but this is what happens.

LoisMD23 wrote:

this is my problem. I cant go through activation. i am being asked to enter apple id used to activate iphone and so i had to enter the previous owner's id and password but this is what happens.

louella.davantes at gmail.com is not the AppleID it is locked to.

It is telling you it is locked to l******@iCloud.com.

Unfortunately I didn't understand this and bought an ipad mini through ebay. Apple support laughed at me when I called. She was very nice about telling me I had just bought a paperweight. So $150 later I understand how this security feature works. I cried and learned my lesson. I cant afford apple products!

The only issue I have is its not reported lost or stolen and the woman claims she got it from work as a gift and never really used it so doesnt remember any of the info related to it. Says she called apple and they couldnt help her either.

What do you think I should do with it now? I assumed it was stolen and figured I could at least give them justice but its not reported missing. I slightly believe the woman but Apple says they can do nothing.

Also, I think apple should use this as a sales pitch, in a way that the general public like me can understand it and will be scared to buy them from anywhere but apple.

Hi If you bought iPad from Ebay you can get a full Refund ask for your money back if they will not pay Open up a case with Ebay you will get all your money back. Cheers Brian

If the woman set it up at any point - I'm guessing that her work didn't give here a used iPad that had someone else's stuff on there - she should be able to remove the Activation Lock for you. Did you let her know the email address info that is asking for the logon was? All she has to do is to go to FORGOT APPLE ID to see if she can find the Apple ID with an email address that looks like the one you are seeing.

Then she can go to Apple - My Apple ID and change the password if she doesn't remember the old one. If she cannot remember the answers to the Security Questions, then she can contact Apple Support to get them reset: ACCOUNT SECURITY CONTACT NUMBERS

Once she figures out what her Apple ID/Password is, she can do any of the following sets of steps to remove the Activation Lock:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4515?viewlocale=en_US

But, since you are corresponding with the seller anyway, why don' t you just return it? It is the seller's responsibility to prepare the phone for resale. This seller did not do that. It is, in essence, not what you paid for.

If the seller does not cooperate, then go to eBay. As Brian indicated above, eBay has a system for resolving issues with returning goods that do not match what is advertised. This seller did not include full disclosure in her advertisement for the device. It is unusable by anyone until that Activation Lock is removed, so what the seller sold you is no different than the seller selling you a device that is non-functional.

Get your money back....

Cheers,

GB

This discussion about who owns the device, apple or consumer is ridiculous. As soon as we purchase the device it is ours to sell keep whatever, how can you make a physical product sell it and expect your consumers not to gift, sell whatever. So many factors come in to play when you expect everyone to buy an iphone new at your retailer or not have one at all, its complete ********.

The discussion is about Activation Lock. If the person who purchases the phone puts an Activation Lock on it and does not take it off, then there is no way to distinguish between the next person who has that phone as the as the rightful "next" owner and a person who steals that phone from the person who put the lock on.

End of story. Apple is not in the business of figuring that out. So, it is across the board - if an Activation Lock is on a device, and you do not know the ID and password of the person who put that lock on, you are out of luck.

GB