“Newly Purchased Cell-Phones Turned Out to Be Secondhand”

Ms. Jeon, 24, an office worker, was startled when she found strange phone numbers stored in her new cellular phone which she had bought last month. Apparently, another costumer had returned it to the sales outlet. The agency re-wrapped it and sold it, unbeknownst to her.

Jeon made a protest against the sales agent but despite her complaints, the agency refused to replace it at first, replying that some units are returned due to a buyers’ negative credit profile.

Ms. Kim, 27, found call records of last December on her new cellular phone which she had bought in January and reported it to the Consumer Protection Board (CPB). “Regardless of product quality, I was very upset that I was deceived,” she said.

These two cases are not special. Returned cellular phones are being sold disguised as new products. We surveyed 15 telecommunication and sales agencies in Seoul and 14 of them were found to have resold returned phones, if lacking cosmetic defects.

The reason, agents say, is that they sell the used phones again mainly because there is no other way to dispose of them. Amid fierce competition to take in subscriptions, sales agents allow those with bad credit or those who are dissatisfied with their newly-bought phones to return them.

However, as manufacturing or distribution companies accept returned products only when they are defective, the agents have to deal with the returned products on their own. Therefore, some crafty agents wrap them up and resell them when there aren’t any visible defects. “We would sustain a loss of hundreds of thousands of won for one product, if gave refunds on spotless products and didn’t sell them secondhand,” an official from SK Telecom said.

However, authorities conclude that it is against the law for agents to sell them at cost if without costumer consent. “It would be defined as a used product if it was possessed by a consumer no matter how short a time,” Sohn Young Ho, chief of the telecommunications department at CPB, said. “Selling a product disguised as new is absolutely a breach of contract.”

buddy@donga.com podragon@donga.com