If you are hunting for a good deal in UK for some smartphone deals, you better be warned that buying a cheap one online or without documents from a fly-by-night operator can land you in trouble. Apparently as the London riots have put the law and order situation out of control over the past few days, a lot of shops have been burgled, with the most common target being cellphone / tablets / gadget sellers. We saw yesterday how Apple Stores have been protecting themselves by emptying their stocks, it is obvious that a lot of other retail chains, manufactures, phone shops are dealing with the same situation.
While stolen goods is a loss for the company for sure, they have a neat comeback in UK. In UK cellphone carriers can lock phones that are reported as stolen, thus rendering them unusable across UK. This is often used in United Kingdom when a cellphone is reported as lost. With companies having digital records of what phones were sold and which were unsold inventory at their store, they have started to submit the IMEI no of the stolen handsets to get the blocked. Not a 100% recovery of loss, but ensures that those phones cannot be used in UK.
Top two issues with this approach:
a) The phones after being locked can be used outside UK. So often traders send them abroad for sale.
b) Works only for gadgets with a cellphone radio. Something like a tablet computer, iPod, PMP wont be affected.
We also aren’t sure if people trying to use such devices are tracked or not? If so, tracing back the looters can be possible. Either ways, some mechanism to help the companies at loss due to rioting in London.