If you’re in the marketplace for a cellphone, particularly a used one, you will hear a lot of talk around ESNs with an emphasis on whether or else not the phone is “clean”. What precisely does acronym stand for as well as what does it mean if the cell phone is clean or not?
Let’s start with the fundamentals and then move onto how you could use that knowledge to defend yourself as a customer. ESN stands for Electronic Serial Number as well as was introduced as an exclusive identification number for all mobile devices by the FCC in the early 1980s. Electronic Serial Numbers were attached to CDMA device (CDMA just refers to the radio kind in the mobile device — Sprint phones, for instance, are CDMA devices). Far along, the ESN system was reviewed into the MEID (to account for a lessening pool of accessible ESNs), as well as still used for CDMA devices.
Though ESN, MEID, and IMEI are different identification standard, ESN has come into prevalent usage as a catch all for the serial number (in whatsoever format it might be in) for the phone in query. As such, you will see reference to the ESN number of an ATT-branded iPhone even however that phone really as an IMEI, not an ESN. Actually, we’re going to use it in the similar fashion for the rest of our reply unless we’re openly referring to a precise identification number scheme.
There are two main reasons why an ESN sould be blacklisted: the phone was stated stolen, or the phone is attached to a cellular carrier account with an unresolved balance.
The first state is actually fairly infrequent, numerous U.S.-based cellular carriers did not actively use ESNs this method for the longest time. In fact, AT&T merely started recording and blacklisting the IMEI numbers of stolen phone in November of 2012 and merely after pressure from government organizations. The second situation, failure to pay an account balance or else skipping out on an agreement, is much more communal. The mainstream of phones you meet with a “bad ESN” earned that blacklist position since the preceding proprietor of the phone left the company with a vast unpaid bill.
So, how could you use this info to protect yourself? You could refuse to buying a phone without a fresh ESN by check IMEI number.While it comes to eBay listings, it’s complicated to totally protect yourself as you are at the mercy of the seller in numerous regards. First, you must try to buying from eBay sellers that clearly specialize in turning over phones as they are the most probable to have run the ESN on IMEI lookup and they are invested in not having to deal with the annoyances of returns as well as customer service annoyances. Contact them as well as request the phone ESN so you could check it by ESN checker or IMEI checker yourself beforehand placing your bid. If they refuse, shop somewhere else; it’s irrational to expect you to bid numerous hundred dollars on a phone without knowing if you could even initiate it with your carrier.
