Yes, I know, grin, this is of course not the best time to be
buying a phone. But, well, seeing as I wanted to test iOS 9
without risking my iPhone 6, and then I thought I might give the
phone to a family member once I was done testing, I decided to go
ahead and make the purchase from Gazelle. I got a used 5S 16GB
AT&T model the site claimed to be in excellent condition for
$413.99, which included two day air shipping.
The Gazelle site was easy enough to use, as I mostly opted to use
it with my computer running Windows 7. However, I never could
seem to create an account after adding something to my cart as
their FAQ claimed. But, rather, I had to finally create the
account first, then add the iPhone to my cart and then go through
the checkout process. Also, I never could get my debit card to
go through, getting some error message about fraud. but, then
when I switched to paying via PayPal, even with using the
checking account the previously attempted debit card was tied to,
the purchase went through without a problem.
I could have chosen various shipping methods, but I opted for the
two day, as I wanted to be sure the phone would arrive while I
was off on vacation. Although, since I'm in Indianapolis, and
the package shipped from Louisville, I'm almost thinking I may
have delayed it getting to me, as it spent a whole day in
Louisville doing nothing before it was shipped to me on that
second day. I also opted for their excellent condition model
phone for $399 plus shipping, as opposed to the one they termed
in good condition for $329 plus shipping.
The box seemed to be packed well enough, as I had to pretty much
tear up the box to get to the phone. The phone was in a zip lock
bag, and that bag was sandwiched between two pieces of foam. The
package also contained the lightning cable, the wall adapter and
a thank you card for buying from Gazelle.
I had no trouble at all getting VoiceOver to start and in setting
up the phone. It came with iOS 8.3, but I updated to iOS 8.4,
and then to the 9.0 beta. Although, grin, with this first public
beta, I very quickly decided to get my education in entering
recovery mode and restoring back to 8.4. And, 8.4 works great on
the 5S, by the way, can't tell much difference than on my 6.
Surprisingly, I was able to use the AT&T site and request that
the 5S be unlocked, and I got back within just a couple of
minutes the congratulations message that the phone could be
unlocked. Thus, I followed the instructions in the email and did
the backup and restore with iTunes and indeed got the
congratulations message on my PC that my phone had been unlocked.
But, not surprisingly, grin, when I went to the Apple support
site and checked the warranty status, of course I was told there
was no active phone support or warranty for the device as those
had expired. The AT&T site had a captcha, for which I used
FireFox, but the Apple site did not have one. By the way, the
Apple site for checking if find my iPhone is turned off on a
device does have a captcha, but the audioit finally offered me
was reasonably clear.
All in all, although I was kind of surprised to learn I could buy
used phones from Gazelle, as I thought they just purchased used
phones, I am so far very pleased with my purchase, as well as
with the timely shipment notification and shipping of the
product.
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