Secondhand phone won't activate

A used phone that looks perfect can still refuse to activate — and when that happens, the cause is usually invisible: the phone's history, not its hardware.

The blacklist problem

Every phone's IMEI can be flagged in a shared industry database if a previous owner reported it lost or stolen, or stopped paying it off. A blacklisted phone cannot be activated on our plan — or on most carriers — no matter how legitimate your purchase was.

Unfortunately, this isn't something we can override. The block has to be removed by whoever placed it, which means:

1. Contact the seller. They (or the original owner) need to resolve the issue with the carrier that flagged the device — pay off the balance or clear the lost/stolen report.
2. Once cleared, the phone activates normally. Send us a note and we'll retry it.
3. If the seller won't cooperate, your recourse is with them or the marketplace you bought through — most platforms refund blacklisted devices.

Other reasons a used phone won't activate

• Still carrier-locked — the previous owner's carrier never unlocked it. How to check.
• Previous owner's eSIM still installed — remove old cellular plans in settings before adding ours.
• Ordinary activation stalls — worth ruling out with the standard eSIM fixes first.

Buying secondhand? Check before you pay

Ask the seller for the IMEI (dial *#06#) before money changes hands, and send it to us — we can run it through our lookup and tell you if it's clean, unlocked, and compatible. Two minutes of checking beats weeks of chasing a seller.