# Any cellphone carrier (US) that has right of phone sale?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cellphone-carrier-us-that-has-right-of-phone-sale/670920>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 10, 2013, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cellphone-carrier-us-that-has-right-of-phone-sale/670920 "2013-10-10T21:09:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![emarkp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@emarkp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emarkp)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2013, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cellphone-carrier-us-that-has-right-of-phone-sale/670920/1 "2013-10-10T21:09:37Z")

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I’d like to update my smartphone (Android 2.2, have had it roughly 3 years), but I don’t need the latest gizmo. I’d be perfectly happy with last year’s Galaxy S3, but my carrier pretty much makes buying a used phone impossible.

I bought a private-refurbed phone, the seller claimed that the IMEI was clean, but when it arrived, I couldn’t connect to the network because the IMEI was flagged as lost/stolen. Fortunately the seller had a good return policy and I got my money back. (AFAICT nothing would have prevented me from buying a used phone, successfully using it for weeks or months and then suddenly have it flagged.)

But this incident made me realize that (at least with this carrier) if I ever wanted to sell my phone, there’s no way I could contact them and say “this is no longer my phone, don’t allow me to flag the IMEI” so that I could sell it with no strings attached. If I can’t sell it, I don’t own it, I’m only renting.

Does any US carrier have a system by which I can be sure when buying a used phone I can claim it as clean and not have to worry about the IMEI later being flagged?