Preownedphones Reviews 2

Purchased an iphone through these people. No phone ever sent. Refused to give refund. I have reported them to Fair Trading and ACCC. They are not based in Aus as indicated on their sites. They have more than 1 website with different names. Buy from a reputable place with good reviews.

We purchased an iPhone 7 from PreOwnedPhones for my son's Birthday. Their site gives the impression that they are based in Australia, even with the slightly dubious English, which we felt was reassuring should we need support. Soon after his Birthday my son reported that the phone was intermittently not charging, then it seemed to settle down and charged properly for a while, but after 4 months it stopped charging altogether.

We contacted PreOwnedPhones and spent the next week sending a requested video (which they didn’t download) and various screenshots till I complained "It’s now a week since I reported the fault with the phone and still it sits here! It’s just 'do this, do that' - looks like stalling tactics in the hope we 'go away'." We then factory reset the phone, advised them and they finally provided a return address - in Hong Kong!

We shipped the phone, at our cost of course, and were told it'd take "7-15 Business days for inspecting the item and sending replacement". It took many chasing emails, threats of leaving poor reviews, and another 6 weeks before the same 'repaired' phone was returned. It was apparent from the tracking history that it had gone to the Chinese mainland for 'repair'.

It worked for another month before failing to charge yet again. This time emails seeking a refund were ignored. We took it to the Apple shop and diagnostics revealed the iPhone 7 has an irreparable hardware issue (shows up in the iPhone's logs). It's likely it has been an issue with the iPhone since we purchased. This should have been picked up when we sent it back to PreOwnedPhones by anyone competent. Apple will give us $100 against a new iPhone, so one last email asking PreOwnedPhones to refund the difference was also ignored.

In total we emailed PreOwnedPhones 30 times! Their on-site motto is "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning" - hilarious - need to get past Kindy then.

Buy an iPhone from PreOwnedPhones at your peril - I'm sure most of the phones they sell work just fine, as most older iPhones do, but they clearly aren't refurbished properly as our iPhone 7 likely had the hardware issue prior to our purchase, and if you need support expect a long haul with little likelihood of resolution. I suspect all the advertised 'refurbished' phones come from the same sources, but if you buy from a genuinely Australian company then a proper outcome to any issues is more likely in my opinion.

We'll be getting our son a new iPhone - we'd be $240 better off (after trade-in) if we’d just done so in the first place.