Return And Refund A Renewed iPhone

After winning the refurbished iPhone lottery several times, this week I lost. Sigh. It was the fourth ever iPhone that I ordered from Amazon Renewed and the first one to have a problem. The return process is already started. It’s disappointing and a bit frustrating, but buying refurbished still seems like a nifty and thrifty idea overall. Otherwise, maybe my “tale of woe” will inform and help others.

Once the dust settles on returning the problematic iPhone to Amazon, which is a surprisingly easy process, I plan to play the iPhone Refurb lottery again. Chances are good (statistically for me) that I’ll win as before. That means getting a great iPhone for a good low price. Yes, savvy and frugal.

The Story

I’m replacing my wife’s iPhone 12 mini with 64GB storage because she can no longer manage data to free up space. The iPhone won’t install the new iOS 18 update because there’s not enough storage available — grrrrr.

So I ordered her an iPhone 13 mini with 256GB storage in “Renewed - Excellent” condition from Amazon. She really wants to stick to the mini size. The phone itself was in great shape overall. The hardware and software worked except for one big issue.

The Problem

On this 13 mini, the “People” tab in the “Find My” app was missing. When I force closed the app and relaunched it, the tab would appear for a brief second then disappear. Weird. We use this feature all the time — it’s great. So I checked every setting possible, no luck. Her previous iPhone 12 mini “People” tab works normally and all her iPhone settings had transferred to the new 13 mini.

Then I searched the web and found a few clues, finally culminating on a Reddit page that seemed to have the answer as to the cause. And it turns out the cause is impossible to resolve.

This particular iPhone 13 mini was, per the model number, made for the Korean/China market. As such, certain functions are disabled, apparently at the hardware (firmware?) level. It’s like a region setting per local laws/rules that must be adhered to. So for the Korean market at least, the Find My app disables the People tab permanently. There seems to be no possible fix.

With a “foreign” refurbished iPhone on hand and the above problem, what other features might be disabled? What other unwanted features might be enabled? Yeah, we’re not going to mess around with that stuff. Back to Amazon the iPhone 13 mini goes.

You win some. You lose some. Right?

My wife’s current iPhone 12 mini still works fine, albeit she’s stuck on the older iOS. Sometime next month, I expect we’ll be able to order another refurbished iPhone from either Amazon or Backmarket and “win.”

In the unlikely event we “lose,” I’ll probably order a brand new purple iPhone 14 direct from Apple. It would cost more than a refurb, but it would also last longer and arrive with zero issues (barring crazy exceptions).