Kena Tricked by Man at Used Handphone Shop

This is the letter i sent to TODAY by e-mail:

A couple of weeks ago, I sold my old Nokia 7260 handphone to a used
handphone shop at Hougang Central.

The person manning the shop offered to buy my handphone for $90. He tested
my phone using his SIM card after I agreed to his price.

He tested the phone by making calls, taking pictures, etc.

After testing the phone, he claimed the phone's access was blocked and
required a security code.

I didn't remember keying in any security access code at all. I tried
several access codes to unlock the phone but to no avail.

The man then said they would need to send the phone to Nokia to be reset
so the phone could be accessed.

He claimed that Nokia charges $25 for this service. As I was in a hurry to
rid myself of the phone, I reluctantly agreed to slash $25 off the $90
price he had first offered.

I didn't suspect anything fishy then. It was only on the following day
that I figured out it could have been the man at the shop who keyed in the
security code while testing the phone.

By doing that, he had tricked me into thinking it was I who had locked the
phone and he was able to slash $25 off the offer price.
I would like to caution those who intend to sell their phones to beware of
such tricks.

A seller can't detect such a fraud unless he stands right beside the
shopkeeper to see what he's doing on the phone.

Since no customer is allowed to step behind the glass display case
housing the phones to see what the shopkeeper is doing on the phone, he
might want to insist on getting the latter to position the phone sideways
so that he can see what is being done.

The next safe alternative is to trade in your old phone for a new one at a
direct retail outlet run by either M1, SingTel or StarHub.