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It sounds like T-Mobile had a huge theft of phones over the weekend. Someone broke into a warehouse and stole around 36,000 phones, roughly worth about $8.2 million. And the kicker, most of these phones were Sidekicks (we’re assuming LX and Slides). T-Mobile of course has all of the IMEIs for the devices on record, and they’ll be keeping an eye out for any of these devices by monitoring who activates them. So if you see a deal that looks too good to be true, and the dealer is a little bit sketchy, you might want to pass. Here’s the internal email that got sent out to T-Mobile dealers:
“Wanted to let you all know that one of our warehouses was broken into over the weekend and some 36,000 phones were stolen (worth about 8.2 Million). The most significant phones stolen were the Sidekick phones. Please make sure you inform the dealers who like to purchase gray market handsets that we are aggressively working with law enforcement to prosecute anyone who has these handsets. We do know the IMEI’s of the stolen phones and once they end up on our network we will go to the dealer code that activated the phone. So if your dealers get a call about Sidekicks and the deal is too good to be true you will know why.”
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 am
..but when my Sidekick 3 was stolen,they couldnt do anything like check if my IMEI ended up on their network after the fact that it was stolen…
February 4th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
superspic:
thats cuz they’re lieing. they’re just upset that they got beat for a buncha phones and they’re tryin to stop people from buyin them.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Actually, they really can see what account uses what IMEI. If they have all the IMEI numbers (which I’m sure they do), it is easy for them to see if it’s being connected to the network. Last week, someone stole a Sidekick from the display. My friend, who is also the owner of this store, had the IMEI number, and found out what account it was being used on and gave them a little call and basically said if its not back here by tonight, I’m going to charge your account.
Believe what you want, but the company can infact view which device ID (IMEI) is connected to the network that they own.
Yeap. That seems to be the way the policy may be staying the same.. That is why we purchase insurance.
February 7th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
hmm
February 10th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
There over priced in the stores anyway. This gives the people who can’t afford to buy one for that proce to get one. And really tmobile have heaps of money and they would have just claimed this loss on inssurance
July 31st, 2008 at 9:27 pm
does this also affect the ppl in canada that want one of these phones, if it is only tmoblie looking for them. cant you just use them on another network?