January 10, 2016 marked the celebration of the iPhone's 10th anniversary. And if you were an iPhone fan or an Apple fan in general, what would you do to show your appreciation and join in the celebration?
How It All Started
Last December 31, 2016, a well-known and respected YouTube channel named EverythingApplePro that has around 3 million subscribers uploaded a video on YouTube. On that video, the owner showed his viewers how he was about to pay $5,400 on Ebay for an "original sealed iPhone" - specifically the iPhone 2G 8GB (aka Apple iPhone 1 or iPhone A1203). And according to him, the reason as to why he was doing it was because his Twitter followers encouraged him to do it.
Before buying it, he said, "So, I'm about to pay $4,000 - no, $5,400 for an original sealed iPhone and I'm a little sketched out." The seller of the package was from Venice. He then said, "Hopefully, it hasn't been re-sealed, because I'm not opening it to check."
The Revelation
Two weeks later (fast forward to January 15, 2017), he posted another video online of him telling his viewers that he got scammed and how he found out about it through an X-ray scan. Given how excited he was, he wanted to know what was inside the box and according to him, "I thought it would be a fun little project just to see what's inside the box - maybe even if it was fake or not." Luckily, he has this friend who works as an electronic technician and has a half a million dollar X-ray machine at his workplace. There, he found out the hard cold truth...
The X-ray Results
The X-ray machine gave him a very accurate result of what was in the package. Inside were 3 discrepancies compared to an original iPhone 2G sealed box. First, the power adaptor was sitting sideways, giving it no room for the device to shake or move. Second, the iPhone was placed in backward. And the final one, there was no USB cable inside.
He also found out online that there was a quick and easier way to find out if the package was fake or not. The quickest way is just to do a scan of the IMEI on Apple's hardware check and it will basically say activate your iPhone - that is if the iPhone has never been used. On his case, however, it did not say those magic words which confirmed the reality of it all.
Contacting The Seller
He sent a message to the seller regarding the product. According to the seller, the box was with him since 2007 and bought it himself at an AT & T store. But after a while of exchanging messages back and forth, the seller started to change his story by saying that he bought it from someone else and it wasn't his fault because he didn't know it was actually fake.
The Ending?
As of now, based on the video he last uploaded, the buyer is trying to get in touch with eBay and hoping that he will get a return from what he purchased. Hopefully, everything will work out fine between the buyer, the seller, and eBay.