Google Pixel XL Phones Blacklisted as Stolen

I really hate how IMEIs can be blocked just outright due to non-payment. That happened to me a few years ago when I bought a used phone off Craigslist, and I took it home and it was blacklisted. I didn't even have the option to pay off the remaining balance...it was just simply a tiny useless wifi tablet at that point.
 
Bandalo said:
That's why my thought was about Project Fi's "enforcement" team. I'm guessing after the first scam they have more people out looking for similar issues, and they may have gone after Swappa sales. Now I don't work for any of the companies involved, so I'm just speculating. Just seems like there's some common issue with resold Project Fi phones.
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They have zero way of knowing how the phone was sold.
 
I have a theory about why this happened.

Project Fi has deals with Sprint and T-Mobile to use their networks. The Fi Android OS periodically checks signal strength of both T-Mobile and Sprint and connects to whichever one is stronger. Now if I have Project Fi and I take the sim out, reset the phone, sell it to someone who has T-Mobile, the Project Fi OS will still periodically try to check the Sprint network to see if it is stronger than T-Mobile. If Sprint is stronger, it will try to connect, this will happen over and over and it will repeatedly be denied by Sprint networks.

Now imagine a sysadmin at Sprint is seeing all these failed attempts to connect to their networks, he informs management, management makes the decision to blacklist those ESN's. They blacklist the ESN's, other networks see it's blacklisted and it gets automatically flagged as stolen.

As an aside, if any of you are running old Nexus phones on Fi and aren't getting updates as often, you can switch to android version O beta and get major updates weekly. I'm running it and it's stable (even though they warn it may not be stable). www.android.com/beta
 
bman212121 said:
I'd have to agree with you Kyle. That seller doesn't look to be the issue here. They have sold many phones over the past 4 years, and you are their only Pixel buyer. If you were trying to dump merch, I don't think you'd be doing that with an account that you put a lot of effort into. Hard to say if the seller knew they were violating a policy, or how they obtained the phone themselves.

This could be something as simple as a PEBKAC error, but no one knows where it came from yet. (Trying to ban one phone and accidently wildcard banning 1,000) Swappa has their own IMEI checker on their page, so you could try to put your number into there and see what their site says. They will show international bans as well as US bans. If it's only been banned on T-Mobile / Sprint, then something funny is going on there. (Which is who project-Fi uses)

https://swappa.com/esn
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Big picture of that on the news page.
 
Bandalo said:
True, and Swappa wouldn't count as "commercial resale" anyway, even if they did know.
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Right. Now, had this person not had been the first owner, and the other person before them was doing something like that one news link who was buying thousands etc and they just now found out about it and started blacklisting all those phones. Which does not make much sense, being that you would only be hurting the buyers and not the scalping of the phones.
 
BlueFireIce said:
Right. Now, had this person not had been the first owner, and the other person before them was doing something like that one news link who was buying thousands etc and they just now found out about it and started blacklisting all those phones. Which does not make much sense, being that you would only be hurting the buyers and not the scalping of the phones.
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If it's a "large number of phones" as Swappa is reporting, then there's something else going on. Maybe they (either the Project Fi guys or a carrier) are watching the IEMI checker Swappa is using to verify sales and banning phones based on that?
 
infinity9 said:
The resale of the device.
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Resale of the device is perfectly legal. Individual resale of items you bought and legally own you can resale, this is US law. Blacklisting a device for the reason it was resold would get them into a lawsuit they would lose very quickly.

Bandalo said:
If it's a "large number of phones" as Swappa is reporting, then there's something else going on. Maybe they (either the Project Fi guys or a carrier) are watching the IEMI checker Swappa is using to verify sales and banning phones based on that?
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They can't, unless the person was selling them as a business. Individual resale is protected under US law.
 
I have a fi phone and am not using googlefi. I can't see anything regarding the device in what is left of my account. I did purchase it outright though.
 
vegeta535 said:
What phone is still supported after 2 years?
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iPhones

vegeta535 said:
Even with the 2 year police my 6P will probably still more up to date then a S8 will be 2 years from now.
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True, but you missed the point of my comment, price of the device vs the expected life span of it.

vegeta535 said:
This the only issue I have with the Android platform.
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Likewise.

BlueFireIce said:
that doesn't mean they will, it just means you will get that long at minimum
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Already burned several times by android devices and as I already mentioned, by Google directly with my now abandoned N6 and N9.

BlueFireIce said:
you are also not promised updates on any other phone and most don't get any at all once pushed through carriers
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See iPhones.

BlueFireIce said:
So 2 years is better than nothing, the price is also worth it to some for the vanilla Android, but many people don't care for this, for me however it is.
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True, a sad reality of androids and yes, i do care, because as I stated, the expected lifespan of a Pixel at this date does not deserve a full price for it.
 
BlueFireIce said:
Resale of the device is perfectly legal. Individual resale of items you bought and legally own you can resale, this is US law. Blacklisting a device for the reason it was resold would get them into a lawsuit they would lose very quickly.



They can't, unless the person was selling them as a business. Individual resale is protected under US law.
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First up, they aren't going to use the term "blacklist" since that is a trigger word. If the phone was included with the terms of services for a Google Fi contract, the original buyer accepted those terms. The original owner can (and did) sell the phone, however Google doesn't have to allow it to keep functioning on networks.

The violation is related to either lack of payment or transferring the services/different Gmail account, not reselling the hardware.
 
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Scizyr said:
I have a theory about why this happened.

Project Fi has deals with Sprint and T-Mobile to use their networks. The Fi Android OS periodically checks signal strength of both T-Mobile and Sprint and connects to whichever one is stronger. Now if I have Project Fi and I take the sim out, reset the phone, sell it to someone who has T-Mobile, the Project Fi OS will still periodically try to check the Sprint network to see if it is stronger than T-Mobile. If Sprint is stronger, it will try to connect, this will happen over and over and it will repeatedly be denied by Sprint networks.

Now imagine a sysadmin at Sprint is seeing all these failed attempts to connect to their networks, he informs management, management makes the decision to blacklist those ESN's. They blacklist the ESN's, other networks see it's blacklisted and it gets automatically flagged as stolen.
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As someone that has a Pixel XL that was bought through Project Fi and moved to T-Mobile. I have to say this is the most likely the real issue going on.

The Project Fi app and service forces a signal check every two hours to see which network has the best signal. With my phone (and the main reason I switch to T-mobile) it would constantly jump to the Sprint Network no matter what. I would have to force it back to the T-mobile network all the time just to have service. (Sprint is one bar at best were I live) After working with Google on the issue of it constantly jumping to Sprint for a month. I just had enough and moved to T-Mobile.

After I switched to T-Mobile, I started to have issues with my phone constantly searching for service. So I figured it was something to with all the Project Fi app and services on the phone. Sure enough after removing and/or disabling anything for Project Fi on the phone. The issue went away and has been solid for the past three months without any issue.

So I am guessing the people that bought these phones that were originally a Project Fi phone didn't remove or disable all the Project Fi stuff and their phones were still trying to connect to Sprint network which possibly caused them to get blacklisted.
 
I can confirm all we can do is verify if the IMEI is blocked or not. We cannot tell you who blocked it.

I haven't received any examples of this though, as not a lot of Pixel users call into T-Mobile.
 
grtitan said:
iPhones



True, but you missed the point of my comment, price of the device vs the expected life span of it.



Likewise.



Already burned several times by android devices and as I already mentioned, by Google directly with my now abandoned N6 and N9.


See iPhones.



True, a sad reality of androids and yes, i do care, because as I stated, the expected lifespan of a Pixel at this date does not deserve a full price for it.
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iPhone is not an answer, if you want an iOS device, go for it. Having come from a number of them, free from work, to paying out of pocket so I can get an Android device, I will pass.

The life span is far past what a device gets in the terms of new OS updates. If you think a devices life span ends once a new version of the OS comes out that it does not get, well, that is your choice.
 
seems to be occurring with phones that folks bought off Craigslist and fleabay too; not just swappa.


edit: htf do you just link to reddit instead of the media tag?
 
BlueFireIce said:
iPhone is not an answer, if you want an iOS device, go for it. Having come from a number of them, free from work, to paying out of pocket so I can get an Android device, I will pass.

The life span is far past what a device gets in the terms of new OS updates. If you think a devices life span ends once a new version of the OS comes out that it does not get, well, that is your choice.
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Exactly, it is my choice, because it is my money that is being spent.

You can hate iphones as much as you want, but the fact remains, they can get updates up to 5 years, which is something that a buyer should not ignore.
 
grtitan said:
Exactly, it is my choice, because it is my money that is being spent.

You can hate iphones as much as you want, but the fact remains, they can get updates up to 5 years, which is something that a buyer should not ignore.
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So you came here in a thread about a blacklisted phone to talk about lack of promised updates after two years so you could suggest an iPhone.....Ok?
 
BlueFireIce said:
Resale of the device is perfectly legal. Individual resale of items you bought and legally own you can resale, this is US law. Blacklisting a device for the reason it was resold would get them into a lawsuit they would lose very quickly.



They can't, unless the person was selling them as a business. Individual resale is protected under US law.
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They can't LEGALLY, or PROPERLY. They can do it accidentally, or if the guy doing it on purpose has no idea what the law says and he thinks he's doing the right thing by the company. However, first someone at the company has to notice what this guy is doing.
 
Pixel Blacklist Update

After spending some more time with Google support today, it seems I finally got someone with a brain! My blacklisted Pixel saga is outlined here/below. Google changed its story and confirmed the phone was blacklisted but not by Google. So maybe my Pixel XL fell off the back of a truck somewhere? Bummer, because it is the best phone I have ever used. Guess we will see how Swappa handles all this.

Picture of support on news page.
 
As soon as I read the headline of this thread I suspected triangle scam related. The high price of the Pixel XL plus the fact Google offers 0% financing - you can literally have an $800 phone overnight on your doorstop for like $40 out of pocket - made this an obvious high profile fraudster target. Fraudster acquires clean SSN with decent credit + prepaid VISA card with $50 of room on it = $750 selling the phone and never making the payments. Or 100% profit with stolen CC.

Triangle scammers have been hammering advance replacement programs for some time too. Dude with a stolen or prepaid VISA scores a $200-$400 Western Digital drive on "advance replacement", sells the drive on ebay and never sends anything back.

This is shitty, and will be another "this is why we can't have nice things" casualty if/when Google gets rid of the financing option, or makes the qualification for financing much more stringent (right now its pretty damn lax).
 
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grtitan said:
No, I came to this thread to justify why a person would buy a Pixel used, instead of new, but the special snowflakes here have to get offended for everything.
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Because when I wanted to buy, you could not get the Pixel from Google due to shortages.
 
My Google Pixel just got blacklisted today. I purchased it from a private seller through PayPal. I called T-Mobile earlier today and they confirmed that somebody reported my phone with the IMEI as lost/stolen. I also contacted Google Support and they pretty much said the same thing. I have had this phone for almost 6 months now.
 
This is similar to when purchasing any other smartphone used - you have to check IMEI to make sure its clean and not attached to a delinquent account, or otherwise under financing. eBay and Swappa are full of phones that human sacks of garbage had financed and then stopped paying their bill on. Eventually the cellular carrier blacklists the IMEI, but it can be a delayed reaction of several weeks or months, giving the seller a big enough window to sell the phone and advertise it as "IMEI clean!", and the buyer isn't the wiser because they're able to register the phone when they receive it. Then one day they wake up and poof - they don't have service.

Unfortunately with Google and Project Fi it seems its been grey area where anti-fraud and procedure has been slow to catch up, as they don't seemingly have an established way for end users to verifying clean IMEI the way the cell carriers do (usually website).
 
Google support services are so bad that I ended up switching to iPhone. They locked me out of my Play account after I had called to ask about spotify being charged twice. The next day my account was locked and every call to google went no where. I even sent screen shot of Photo ID and CC and nada.
Hundreds or so in Apps down the drain and no way to change it. Devices that have become useless as im not buying apps again. Fuck google support.
 
Makes you wonder what kind of damage a hacker could do if one gained access to lists of phones and could blacklist millions at once.
 
I feel for you, Kyle. I ended up with a 32GB Pixel XL because they were out of pre-orders for the larger storage edition, and I really wanted the free Google Daydream for pre-ordering. I did the financing since I'd just bought a Note 7 and they hadn't refunded the money yet and I needed a phone fast (I pre-ordered like 2 days before release since the Note 7 got recalled and I was stuck with a loaner). In hindsight, I wish I'd waited and bought a 128GB edition, as the 32GB edition is almost always close to max capacity and not being able to throw in a microSD card has made it even worse. I love the phone, and am currently in the Android O beta test, but the 32GB edition was WAY overpriced. I think I've used the Daydream a grand total of 3 times.; compared to Vive on my gaming rig, the Daydream isn't even worth touching.

Thanks for documenting this ongoing saga. It's been an interesting read, and may ultimately highlight an ongoing problem with phone scams.
 
EBAY would of gotten your money back! And really, Everyone here knows just how bad it is with phones being stolen and lost and you go out of your way to by used. You are just asking for it!
 
BlueFireIce said:
So you came here in a thread about a blacklisted phone to talk about lack of promised updates after two years so you could suggest an iPhone.....Ok?
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What actually happened was you were already talking about updates and he informed you that iPhones do indeed get updates longer than you stated.

Don't get upset cause you said something untrue.
 
I wonder if there's a way to root the device and wipe the IMEI...perhaps as a last resort.

Google support can be frustrating - I've had a lot of pain dealing with problems on my Nexus 6p
 
Wow this is shitty. I would be pretty rippin if my Pixel lost cell capabilities out of the blue. If Swappa doesn't figure this out as well it could cause some pretty big issues for them.
 
A perfect reason not to buy used phones from people you don't know.
I was selling my s7 recently and the guy demanded to meet me in my house and have my drivers license ready, i told him to fuck off. I knew why he was doing it, but even after showing him proof i'm a regular at another forum and have the original receipt he still wanted me to cave to his demands.

yyv_146 said:
I wonder if there's a way to root the device and wipe the IMEI...perhaps as a last resort.
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Yes there is a way with a certain device, service centers change imei's all the time, but if you're caught with another imei you're screwed with the popo.
 
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I wish Google would implement something similar to Apple's iCloud registration. People are less likely to steal a phone if it's just a paperweight outside of the owner's hands.
 
Matthew1337 said:
My Google Pixel just got blacklisted today. I purchased it from a private seller through PayPal. I called T-Mobile earlier today and they confirmed that somebody reported my phone with the IMEI as lost/stolen. I also contacted Google Support and they pretty much said the same thing. I have had this phone for almost 6 months now.
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Would anyone have any suggestions for me? Should I dispute it on PayPal and try and get a refund??? I really need a new Pixel now ASAP!
 
I can see if you turn the phone on and within a 24-48 hours it's reported stolen than you have a beef with the person, site or company who sold you said equipment. If it's reported stolen 5-6 months after you have activated it in your name then the other party should be out of luck.
 
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