Find My Phone - Refurbished

Hi everyone,
We've gotten a refurbished iPhone 4 as a replacement for another one, but it was locked out with Find My Phone. Now, realising that resetting the phone and doing all kinds of stuff on it won't help since verification happens during connection to Apple, I'm wondering what's the appropriate course of action here. Are we in our right to contact support store and ask for another phone that is not locked? We've contacted them before and they said there's nothing they can do about it since we have no proof of purchase, but as far as our agreement goes, if they provide replacement for it why do they need proof of purchase anyway?
Thanks!

Was this refurb phone supplied directly by Apple through their out-of-warranty replacement program for which you paid a discounted fee?
If so, they should not have given you an Activation Locked phone, and a record of the transaction will be in your account, and you would've been given a receipt for your payment.
If the replacement came from anywhere else then it's impossible to say where you stand.

Similar Messages

How do I most effectively use find my phone and how can I help a family member use find my phone?

What is the most effective way for me to use FIND MY PHONE?
What is the most effective way for me to help my family member FIND THEIR PHONE?
Thank you

Effectively use is for what? On your computer you can log into iCloud at www.icloud.com and locate your device. Or you can use a different iOS device and the Find My iPhone app to do the same thing.

Did you know that if your phone is stolen, Find my Phone is useless?

Lessons from my lost iPhone. Despite having a pin to unlock the iPhone, you can simply power off the phone with a long press of the power button. Which means that if your phone is stolen and the thief is smart enough to turn it off (is there one who isn't?), 'Find my phone' is virtually useless!
Also, you can use Siri on a locked phone to make phone calls and send messages. There are also enough tips available on the internet that show you how to use Siri to unlock the phone, making all your photos, emails and other information available to anyone keen enough to find it.
I've written to Apple to tell them that a phone lock should really do what it says - LOCK the phone! If you own an iPhone and would like the same please write to Apple at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
Perhaps when enough people write they'll actually take some notice!

This subject is discussed fairly frequently. Find my iPhone is not useful unless a particularly ignorant thief takes it. It's primary use is to find lost phones, not stolen. Requiring a passcode to turn it off eliminates one way a thief can disable Find my iPhone, but it isn't the only one, and probably isn't the one used by most professional thieves. Among other ways to disable Find my iPhone:
Remove the SIM
Wrap in aluminum foil
Drop in a shoplifter's bag or backpack with its Faraday shield (copper mesh or foil lining)
Restore the phone from DFU mode
The Activation Lock feature, which prevents a stolen phone from ever being used again, except by the rightful owner, is the more valuable deterrent against theft. Once word gets around that a stolen iPhone is useless the market value of stolen phones will drop precipitously, and thieves will switch to stealing Android phones.

Iphone 5s Lost/Stolen - Questions about Find my Phone on ios7

OK, I have done something very stupid but I need some advice anyway, will likely not ever get my phone back but I'm curious as to how it works.
1) I bought an unlocked iPhone 5s for travel.
2) I installed "find my phone" before leaving Canada
3) I came to China to live for 6 months and I inserted a China Unicom SIM card.
4) I purchased a cell phone plan that has basically no data
5) I then went into my settings and turned off Cellular Data for all apps (this was the stupid thing that I did without thinking).
Therefore, find my phone is off in Cellular Data. Last night my phone was lost and/or stolen. I immediately tried to use "find my phone." As soon as it said my device was offline I realized what I had done and how stupid it was. I did still set the lock and send it a messages so if for some reason it comes online it will be locked, but....here are my questions:
1) Will "find my phone" work over Wifi automatically if Cellular Data is off?
2) If my phone IS in the hands of a thief, is this even helpful? Could a thief just pop out my SIM card, insert their SIM card, somehow bypass my fingerprint/passcode (I know there are hacks for that) and then just turn off / disable Find My Phone? Because if they put in their SIM card and use 3G, but haven't started using Wifi yet, then "find my phone" won't be activated yet, correct?
3) So is my only hope to leave a thief with a worthless brick that they take the phone somewhere and try to use it on Wifi to set it up? IF they insert a new SIM and manage to hack my passcode, BUT they fail to deactivate "find my phone" and then they join a wireless network, would my phone immediately lock

Use Find My iPhone to track iPhone only if the following conditions are met:
1. Find My iPhone is ON and activated.
2. iPhone has Internet connection.
3. iPhone is not switched OFF.
To track
https://www.icloud.com/#find
Lost or Stolen
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5668

What are the options if one iPad was stolen last week and Apple created a bug which the burglar can turn off "Find My Phone"?

Last week, my gf was stolen and lost her iPad. I thought that everything was lost because "Find My Phone" didn't manage to track the iPad location so the police could do something.
Today, I ended up reading this article (http://9to5mac.com/2014/04/03/ios-7-bug-allows-anyone-to-disable-find-my-iphone- and-bypass-activation-lock-without-a-password/) which tells me that the iOS 7.1 presents a bug where someone can deactivate the "Find My Phone" function without the password.
What are the options here so I can rehave the stolen iPad, which Apple helped the burglar to keep it or even sell it?
Appreciate your cooperation

Apple didn't "help the burgler" do anything. Did she have a passcode on the device? If so, the thief would not have been able to access any of the functions needed to disable Find My Phone. Also, if the device doesn't show up in iCloud's Find My Phone, it may be that it is simply turned off, or not connected to a network.

I changed my iCloud account ID but my new phone won't let me change it. It keeps asking me for for my old ID password and won't let me delete the account unless I turn off the find my phone feature. It won't let me do this because it will not accept my ol

I changed my ICloud account ID but my new phone won't let me change it unless I put in my old password and turn off the find my phone feature. But the phone will not recognize my old password. Can someone help me?

New iPhones don't come setup with an Apple ID/Password. What you're experiencing is called Activation Lock, & unless you know the original Apple ID/Password that was originally used to first activate this phone, you won't be able to reactivate it.
You can login to iCloud.com, from any computer, use Find My Phone to locate & erase the phone. But, you'll still need to know the original Apple ID/Password to reactivate it.

Find My Phone, From 3000 Miles Away

This is a story of how Find My Phone was used to try to locate and recover a stolen iPhone. It took place from 6AM one morning to 9PM that night, 15 hours.
* My wife and I wake up to find a 3-hour old message on her phone, from her daughter’s (Tina) boyfriend (Will), saying that her iPhone 4S was stolen. We’re in NC; they are in Sacramento, CA. She is asleep in the casino motel at this time, and has his phone with her; he’s in the casino (where her phone was stolen). Her iPhone was using the latest software (iOS7) and she had it password locked so we weren’t too worried that the thief could get into it, at least not for a while.
* I locate her phone (using Find My Friends) in North Highlands area and it was moving. It finally stopped, but couldn’t tell what street it was on. Wasn’t listed on Find My Phone (FMP) maps, and on another map it showed Brown Ln and another it showed Constitution Ave. So I sent her a pic of the map, big enough to show the names of the 2 streets at the nearest intersection. We kept calling Tina for nearly an hour, until she finally woke up and checked the phone for calls.
* Using Tina’s Apple ID and password I logged into her iCloud account and located her phone from my computer. I found that her phone was down to 9% charge, so we stopped tracking it for long periods so as to not drain the battery. Once dead we would never ever find it. Tina didn’t want me to put it in Lost Mode for fear it may spook the thief and cause them to ditch the phone in a dumpster.
* I called the police in North Highlands. They tell me they can’t do anything until she files a police report from the district where it it was stolen. Placer Country sheriff. I found out later that she had notified the casino security, and they had been in contact with the on-duty deputy at the casino, but no report was filed by them (has to be done by the victim). I’ll forgo the very long ordeal in trying to get Tina in contact with the filing officer at Placer Co… my blood would boil if I re-lived the frustration in doing that.
* The casino deputy tells me that the casino checked their records and video to find who next used their casino card at the slot machine used by Tina. They were able to get a name and from that the deputy got a picture of her driver’s license. The address on the license was not current and the phone number he got for her was not working. And now that the report was filed, Tina is to take that report number to the North Highlands police so that they can actually start doing something. It’s now about 1PM CA time. A lot of waiting has gone on in trying to get the report filed - we had to wait until a deputy pretty much had nothing else left to do for the day.
* By this time we had discovered that the thief had actually charged up the phone. It came up to 100%, so now we could locate it as often as we needed. Thanks!
* Since about 1pm Tina had been heading towards North Highlands while Will stayed at the casino. I would locate the phone and send a map to Tina. This went on for most of the early afternoon. Tina had a GPS with her so I assumed she was using the cross streets that were on the map to enter into the GPS. Wrong. She didn’t know how to use it. Her GPS wasn’t a stand-alone GPS like I thought; it was part of the Android phone she was using. It was difficult enough to use, but coupled with the fact that we were texting and sending pictures over the same phone was too much to take. I think Will initially set it up before she left the casino to head for North Highlands. Now, part of this problem was me - I had totally forgot how easy it is to get an address from FindMyPhone. I used a convoluted method of opening in Maps and/or using Google Earth to locate some nearby business to give the address of that. (One tap on the “i” icon in FMP shows the address of the phone, or very close to it.) Oh, another thing - on the phone she was using, it would not display a picture sent via text if I also sent some text within the same message. It could only show a pic if sent just by itself. Major cause of confusion.
* By 2pm Tina had returned to pick up Will and they left again to go to the address in North Highlands. It appeared to be an apartment building, probably where the thief lived. They had planned to go to the apartment area and call for the police to meet them there. The best fix I ever got for the phone showed it inside the right rear corner of the building, close enough to pinpoint the apartment where the phone was (but not which floor, if more than one!).
* Didn’t matter, because just before they got there the thief was moving again. It was 3:30pm CA time, and here begins the wild chase through the outskirts of Sacramento that lasted for over 3 hours. Now, I’m trying to talk to Tina & Will to give them directions as to the location of the thief, they are talking to each other, my wife and I are talking, and Will is trying to drive and navigate in a city he’s not familiar with. So it’s fair to say that at times there was ample confusion, and also it became abundantly clear that no one in the vehicle had an operational navigation gene.
* After about 3 hours of chasing the thief around Sac, they ended up traveling mostly up and down Arden Way. I think they stopped at every drug store on that road. At one point Tina and Will actually met them going in opposite directions along Arden Way (but didn’t know which car the thief was in). What made this a bit more difficult is that FindMyPhone doesn’t “track” a phone giving you a moving dot on a map; it gives you a snapshot of where the phone is now. But “Now” can be several minutes old, as FMP won’t let you keep getting location fixes continuously, sometimes you have to wait for a fix (guess Apple was thinking about using up your subject’s battery by not allowing you to hit its GPS constantly).
* They stopped at a Walgreens at Howe and Arden Way, and stayed there long enough for Tina & Will to get there. I got an excellent fix on the thief at the southwest corner of the parking lot, where Will got the license numbers of a dozen cars in that corner. The plan was to track them to their next destination and get license numbers again - if we got one that matched we would know which car was theirs. Will was parked right next to a red car in the corner. A few girls came out of the drug store, saw Will and Tina looking over the cars, and appeared to get very nervous looking. They jumped in their car and sped away. Will was sure he had the right people (turned out he was right).
* At that time the phone started moving again, and stopped behind a shopping center on the opposite corner of that intersection, but Tina and Will overshot their location and it took a while to get back and for me to convey the thief’s location. When they arrived in the parking lot Will saw the same girls driving off and went after them, but the phone stayed behind! I got Will to turn around and come back, telling him the phone was still at the shopping center (or mall). I sent picture after picture of where it was and tried explaining how they might get there, but no dice. Some people are good at seeing a map picture and transferring that image to where they are, and, well, some people aren’t. It also doesn’t help that GPS is sometimes off by several tens of feet, like that day at that time. It showed the phone in the back corner inside the mall building, within a very small radius.
* They got mall security to come help, and several employees, and went to the back of the store at that corner. I set Tina’s phone to make an alarm sound while they searched and listened. On my phone I tested what this sound was like so I could tell them what to listen for. What a joke. The “alarm” sound is a soft ringing bell, not loud at ALL. That might be fine if you’re looking for your phone in a living room under a couch cushion, but almost useless in this situation. We finally gave up.
* OK, THEN I got another good position fix outside the mall building, in an alley just behind the mall. Tina & Will went outside in the alley. To make matters worse, out in the alley there were loud noises coming from air conditioning equipment located nearby. There were parked cars and dumpsters everywhere.
* I started playing a sound on her phone again while they walked around listening and looking. After about 30 minutes of that we were ready to call it quits. We didn’t know what else to try. It was 6:30pm CA time. We’d been at this for nearly 15 hours.
* Then Will said, “Wait a minute!”. He was hearing something. After a few seconds I could hear it too, through Will’s speakerphone. He said “I found it!”. It was in a small black cloth bag with a pull string at the top, tucked deep inside a bush along the edge of the alley!
* I guess the girls got spooked at the Walgreens parking lot and decided to ditch the phone, but Im glad they chose a bush with a clear view of the sky and not a metal dumpster. Back in 1990’s I used to be a P.I. for several years, but this one takes the cake. Well, almost.

Do you have the latest updates for MacOS (10.7.2) ?
See also this article for more info: Free Find My iPhone: Frequently Asked Questions

HT4061 I downloaded IOS7 on My Iphone5 and put in a 4 digit lock code for find my phone but My phone wont Accept it. It wont let me restore/backup.

I put in My IMEI code and ICLOUD tells me THAT THE product has been replaced. I am doing This to TRY TO ACTIVATE MY IPHONE5 AS it wont Accept My 4 digit code after downloading IOS7
So My phone in disabaled, wont let me backup,restore kos FIND MY PHONE IS TURNED ON! How Canon i turn it on if phone is disabaled and computer wont recognise phone kos its locked and if i reboot it it demands i enter code (how Can i, phone,computer wont Accept) TALK ABOUT BANGING MY HEAD AGAINST A WALL, ALL I WANT IS TO USE MY PHONE . APPLE INTRODUCE NEWS SUPER SYSTEM, BETTER THIS, BETTER THAT, HA. IVE SPENT ALL YESTERDAY AND STILL TRYING TO RESOLVE THIS, LET ALONE MAKE A SIMPLE PHONE CALL!
HELP ME SOMEONE PLEASE ,PLEASE

You can't restore a backup to a phone that is running a version of iOS earlier than the version running when the backup was made. Normaly this situation occurs when replacing a phone, and the eplacement OS is not up to date. The fix is to update the replacement phone, then restore from the backup.
You could try an older backup made with iOS6.
Anyway, why do you need all your info on it while the screen is being fixed?

HT1766 I have no service, it keep saying searching, my provider said to back up and then do a restore. I am trying to restore and it wants me to turn find my phone off. WHen I go into Icloud to do that and put my password in it says it cant deregister the

I havent had service for a week now. It comes and goes and just keeps saying searching. The AT&T rep said to back up on computer and then do a restore of the iphone. When I go to restore it wants me to turn off the find my phone in icloud. I go to do that and it says it cant deregister the device??

Hello Becklee21,
It sounds like you are trying to restore your phone but are unable to turn off Find my iPhone to do so. If you have already backed up your phone to iTunes on your computer with the info from the article named:
iOS: How to back up and restore your content
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766
I would try deleting the iCloud account from the phone altogether, then restoring the phone again.
On your iOS device’s Home screen, go to Settings > iCloud, then at the bottom of the screen, tap Delete Account.
iCloud: Change iCloud feature settings
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2613
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Take care,
Sterling

I lost my Iphone 4s and I need the iMei number to trace. THAT fellow actually off my phone at my last location.I dont have sim on that i phone.I am trying to trace the iphone through find my phone but it showing offline. Thus another way of solving w

I lost my Iphone 4s and I need the iMei number to trace. THAT fellow actually off my phone at my last location.I dont have sim on that i phone.I am trying to trace the iphone through find my phone but it showing offline. Thus another way of solving will be through IMEI number which i need to hand it over to the police! How can i get the iMei number? Can I use Itune? As previously, I did sync into iTunes before. Will it have the record of my iMEI number? PLEASE HELP ME!
iPhone 4S, iOS 7.0.1

how to find IMEI, etc
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4061?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I am so angry - there has to be a misundering. my Itunes was disabled as there was a charge that I did not authorize and I cannot find the phone

I am so angry - there has to be a misunderstanding. my Itunes was disabled as there was a charge that I did not authorize and I cannot find the phone number for security and the dingbat girl who I'm emailing send me a link that does not work. And I am extremely frustrated. Please help. I need a phone # to contact security.

Contact Apple Support here:
ACCOUNT SECURITY CONTACT NUMBERS
Cheers,
GB

HT4623 iOS 6 update on iphone 5 failed now itunes does not find my phone

I have been seeing some distubing things about this update and this is of course after i have had the current problem. long and the short of it using my MAC i was able to update my ipad no issues but when doing my phone it got most of the way through and then failed to complete. the phone is stuck on the usb/itunes screen and itunes on the mac no longer finds the phone. FYI enven on my PC as a longshot to at least get the phone working it is not recognized there either................
NOW WHAT..................... any and all help welcome

Hey mfrouns,
Thanks for the question. It sounds like your iPhone is not recognized in iTunes when connected to your computer. To troubleshoot this issue, see the relevant article for your operating system:
iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Windows
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1538
iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Mac OS X
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1591
Thanks,
Matt M.

HT4901 i am trying to delete my find my phone app on my computer for my ipad because my ipad is not working and i cant get into it. i need to restore my ipad but cannot do that untill i switch off find my phone. please help!

hey guys i need your help! my ipad 3 has gone blank. i have been able to restart it by pressing down on both keys but now it wont work. the screen illuminates and i still get notifications but its just a black screen. i tried to restore it on itunes but it tells me to turn off find my phone app. well i cant do thay because i cant access my ipad. i am so frustrated! my ipad is only 1.5 years old so its still fairly new. can anyone tell me how to delete the app on my laptop? i have tried but no success yet. when i go into my icloud account i cant find anywhere that says to turn off or delete find my phone. any help will be greatly appreciated. thanks.

Go to http://www.icloud.com in your computer's internet browser. Sign in, go to Find My iPhone, locate your device there.

Changing my Apple ID name requires closing Find my Phone under the old original Apple Id, which no longer exists.

I changed my Apple ID to my current email. I tried to sign out of all iphone apps which were open under the original ID, and then sign in again with the new ID. The ICloud app will not let me sign out until I close "Find my Phone", which pre-populates a sign out with the old original Apple ID, asking for just a password. I can't sign out, because the original ID no longer exists.

It still exists. You just need to reset the password for that ID. If the email address associated with that ID (which may not be the same as the user ID) does not exist, you may have to call Apple and ask for Account Security.

I have two iphones with one apple id. How do I set up 'find a phone'?

have two iphones with one apple id. How do I set up 'find a phone'?

To wjosten-
I just posted a similar question asking HOW you get into a menu for 'my devices' in order to name them? Thanks!

Find My Phone - Refurbished

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