Adventures in buying used iPads
TLDR: Check whether a used device is in a Mobile Device Management (MDM) pool before buying it.
I bought a used iPad Pro 12.9” off of Craigslist. I bought it to use with my new exercise bike, which I may write about in another post.
After some back and forth through texts, I met the seller and gave the iPad a once-over in person. It looked good. It was in what I’ll call a “demo” state: all the initial setup had been complete, but no user was logged in. That seemed slightly odd — I would’ve expected it to be at the initial clean-reset stage, where you pick your country, language, etc. But whatever, maybe he thought this would be easier for the buyer to try out. I assessed the seller’s vibe and decided it was decent enough. I bought it and went home.
Everything was great for a day or so until I decided it was time to do a clean reset and clone from my iPad mini. I reset it and clicked through the first few options, and then I saw this:
Remote Management
This iPad is owned by:
[Redacted] College
Remote management is required and will allow this organization to set up email and network accounts, install and configure apps, and manage the settings of this iPad.
Uh oh.
When you click through that page, you have to login with an account from the organization. And my frantic research made it clear that there’s no proper way to get around it. I did manage to bypass it by doing some really shady shit on my Windows machine as directed by a Youtube video I found on Reddit. I can almost guarantee I got a virus in the process. But when the iPad updated to the latest OS and restarted, back to the MDM screen I went.
There are two likely explanations for this scenario:
- This iPad was stolen from the organization’s device pool.
- The organization sold off a bunch of old devices and forgot to remove MDM.
I assumed this was scenario 1 and I’d been scammed. But to my surprise, when I reached back out to the seller, he tried to help. He said he'd contact the org to ask them to remove the device from MDM, and a couple days later, he wrote back to say they'd done that.
Awesome! I hurried to reset the iPad once more, but alas, I hit the MDM wall again. And again and again, as I tried over the next couple days. The seller eventually took the iPad back and refunded me the money. I got lucky there.
I bought the replacement iPad from Swappa after seeing it praised on Reddit. I made sure to buy from a seller that had a lot of good ratings, hoping this would mean they have a reputation to defend and a decent return policy.
It arrived this morning. It was in a clean-reset state, and it progressed smoothly through the setup and backup restore. [Breaking news] As of this moment, I’m now writing this post on it. No hiccups so far! 🤞
I’ll call this a happy ending. The boosted iPad cost me a lot of time and angst. But lesson learned: if I’m buying used, the more complicated the device, the more I need to find a reputable seller and not take the risk on a good Craigslist deal.