Nike Ayoola (real name withheld), a Lagos State resident, has accused Olaoluwa Omoyajowo, the owner of an Ibadan-based phone store called Techbay, of dubiously selling a ‘locked’ iPhone to her.

A locked iPhone, as gathered online, can only work in the United States, but an unlocked phone can work anywhere.

Ayoola told FIJ that she was about to swap her iPhone 11 Pro Max for another phone at Computer Village last Saturday when she discovered that the phone had become useless after it was formatted.

“I had to buy another phone because the 11 Pro Max is now useless,” said Ayoola.

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The Lagos resident said she bought the phone from Techbay on March 23, 2022, at the rate of N330,000 and the vendor never told her she could not format the phone.

“When I got to Computer Village, where I wanted to swap the phone last Saturday, the vendor said he needed to do a factory reset in my presence to be sure it was not a locked phone,” Ayoola told FIJ.

“He found out that the device was a locked phone after he did the factory reset. He told me Techbay only did a by-pass to allow me use the device.”

Ayoola further noted that she reached out to the owner of Techbay but he was not apologetic about the incident.

She said rather than take responsibility for not informing her about the pros and cons of the type of iPhone he sold to her, Omoyajowo insulted the vendor at Computer Village for restoring the factory setting.

“When I sent him the receipt, he said the other guy in Lagos should have known that it was a worldwide-unlocked iPhone,” she said.

“I asked him why he never told me about the possible outcome of restoring the factory setting when I bought the phone. Also, why did he not tell me it was a worldwide-unlocked phone?

“He does not even feel like it’s a big deal. He said if I had brought the phone to him, he would have erased my data instead of restoring the factory setting.”

When FIJ contacted Omoyajowo for comments, he blamed the vendor at Computer Village for restoring the phone’s factory setting without proper verification.

According to him, the vendor should have ascertained whether the phone was a chip or factory-unlocked device.

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FIJ asked if the iphone he sold to Ayoola was chip or factory unlocked, but he said he could not remember except the customer returned the phone as she bought it from his store.

“We usually tell our customers not to wipe their phones if it is chip unlocked, but most of them would have forgotten. Her case is not the first. If she had brought the phone to me, even I would have checked before doing anything on it.”

When asked if the phone could still be functional, he said, “It can work if she uses a chip with it.”