a member sold an item that is apparently stolen. what can be done to stop this member trading

[sig1-8]

sold me a phone that has been reported as stolen or lost.  What can be done to stop him trading

[horizon1907]

You say apparently, rather than certainly ? If you can prove that it has been stolen, my guess would be to inform ( call ) ebay immediately and give them all the details.  I think then they can inform Law Enforcement to act on it.  They do take that very seriously. 

[horizon1907]

Added later. This phone was sold in July going by the records. How come your very late post ? 

[lyndal1838]

You would have received the phone in late July/early August and you have just now decided that it is stolen or lost.  Judging by the feedback reply by the seller he has heard nothing about it from you either.

Before you badmouth sellers on the boards and reporting them to anyone you need to be very sure of your facts. 

The listing states that the SIM tray is missing from when they tried to remove it (I presume they mean the SIM card)

I think you might find that the seller deactivated the SIM card and it has translated into lost/stolen on the Optus system.  We had a similar thing happen...my OH misplaced his phone so reported it to Optus.  It was returned to him within 12 hours but it was still on the Optus system as lost and could not be used.

[sig1-8]

Yes it was the SIM card tray that was missing.  Since I have never owned an iphone I didn't have a spare one floating around, and it took ages to aquire a tray.  Getting the phone working was not my highest priority in life, I have more to do than worry about things like that, it got done when it was convenient. It would have been nice to operate it immediately but I had to get a charger,  then the tray, then acertain why it wouldn't work.  Telstra alerted me to the fact that it had been reported as stolen or some other form of non ownership,  hence my use of  'apparently'.

I had previously sent an alert to the seller but he denies getting it, maybe it is still in cyber space somewhere. When I received no reply I took the next step.

The seller has contacted me and the matter has been resolved to everyones satisfaction.  He said he bought the phone, didn;t use and onsold it in good faith.  The phone has been returned and money refunded. 

[lyndal1838]

Well there you go.  All you needed to do was contact the seller and ask for an explanation.

No need to badmouth him on the boards, call for his blood, report him to the authorities and have him blacklisted on ebay.

Be sure of your facts before you jump to conclusions.

[Anonymous]

I sold a phone a while back and ebay required that the IMEI(?) number be mentioned in the listing.

This number can be searched for free to find if a mobile device has been reported lost or stolen.

I ended up giving the buyer a full refund because I thought it was unlocked but it was..lol

I guess the seller didn't provide an IMEI number ( which doesn't require to have a sim card in place ).

Glad it worked out for you OP and I hope you apologised to the seller for thinking his act was deliberate.