Hi Guys,
I just want to write to all the people that are planning to order a mobile phone from China. I thought it would be a good idea to save some money and order my Iphone from China from a company called www.cheapphonestore.com . Little did I know at the time that I was on the way to get seriously ripped off. I came accross the cheapphonestore website by browsing Google for Iphones and saw that they were selling the latest 3g iphones. Their website seemed genuine as they also had a live help system so I managed to immediately write to someone at the other end. The only thing I didn't think about was that in the UK it was 20h00 which means in China it must have been 4am. Who works at that time of the day...?
I asked cheapphonestore if their phones were genuine and on 6 occasions they reassured me that they were. They asked me to transfer the money ($259) by Western Union and to give them the MTC (Money transfer code) which I immediately did.
To cut the story short I received an Iphone 1 week later but the box was opened and it had a very strong smell of glue(typical Chinese box construction) which made me suspicious. The phone looked like the real thing. It had no battery which is normal, it also only had 1 memory card slot which already eliminates doubt but when I tried to connect it to my laptop it refused to recognise Itunes. Instead, a message popped up at the bottom of my screen saying that the pc recognised new hardware called MT6229. When I typed this code into Google I immediately realised that the phone was a clone.
There is absolutely nothing I can do with this iphone as it only has 2 gb of memory and the software inside the iphone is chinese. When I contacted cheapphonestore soon after, they still claimed that the iphone they sent me was real so when I tld them that they must be total ignorants if they can't make the difference between a real iphone and the mt6229 they suddenly asked me to send it back to them. Of course they wanted the phone before they would issue a refund. When I told them that I wanted a refund first and that I then would return the mt6229, they stopped replying to my emails.
Unfortunately, many people like myself are getting scammed every single day and this is why I am writting this article. I would advise anyone to research the company you are buying from before sending money. A good trick is to type the name of the company in Google plus the word 'scam'. Also avoid companies that want money with Western Union as it really is like giving cash to someone without a receipt. If you come accross www.cheapphonestore.com please avoid at all cost!