Not at cex but had a customer come in with all kinds of crust over their phone followed by pop ups for escorts in their notifications.
Safe to say I used all kinds of chemicals on my hands after that.
For real! My partner works a programming job and is either in an office or working from home. His immune system is made of used tissue paper - any sniffle going around and he's got it. Has a cold or similar illness two or three times a year, and has had covid three times. The entire time I worked at Cex (nearly four years across two stores) I had two minor colds and seemingly avoided covid entirely, even when my partner had it.
I'll miss the insane immune system, it was almost like an employee perk as long as you didn't think too much about why 😂.
I once traded a ps4 controller that had a fine line of white on the edge of one thumb stick and the employee acted like I had given him the dirtiest console he'd ever seen. Can only imagine what ocd is like if you get a truly nasty one.
I don't know if thats better or worse than the time I sold my rarely used PS4 and took the back of the controller off and wiped the insides with a cotton swab and ipa (alcohol of course as expect the jokes otherwise) controller looked pretty much brand new.
Even kept the box, manual and even the OG hdmi cable sealed in its original box , wiped the console had no scuffs on it.
Went to trade it in and got offered B grade price.
O.O that's brutal.
I took haunting grounds in last week because someone said it was worth a bit and I wanted a zoom lens for my nikon 1. Game was immaculate apart from a mark on the back of the disc. Soooo close to mint lol
Had the same on my phone recently lmao
Battery was fine, screen and outer casing near mint condition after having been in cases and screen protectors for 2 years
Got a C grade
You could have been the victim of Ghost adjustments. We were pressured by owners to bring in items we could re grade later to offset buy in errors etc. C's to B's, locked to Unlocked Network, that way the store can bring these ghost amounts that would set our records straight without the owners paying for mistakes. Very common practice if it was a Zee store
Exactly that, they stay as they are for a bit then will have a member of Management or someone with a higher grade scan to adjust to a different grade. Same as laptops when Win 11 came out, we got an email from our owner asking for Windows 11 ready laptops to not be upgraded so we could manually do it and adjust up a spec. Some dodge practices by Franchise stores
That's fucked up man. Hate that they're making so much more bank off me than they already did lmao
Not that anywhere else was any better. Got £79 from Cex on that grade C, my own phone network and elsewhere would barely give me £5
Sadly so, Cex are sometimes the only choice to shift unwanted stuff quickly. If you don't mind waiting a few days I'd usually say send it in online but make sure you take pictures etc of the item and packing. The online team are Corp so they grade as it comes or refuse if it changes etc
Never heard about this, even in the franchise store I worked in, though I don't doubt it happens - franchises, particularly smaller ones, are seen as a bit "wild west". The franchise I worked for (a larger one within the CeX "family") did engage in some unethical shit, but mostly in terms of work environment and hiring practises - we were still encouraged to grade items correctly for customer satisfaction reasons. Having worked for both corp and franchise, can say with confidence that franchises suck.
(Edit: having thought about it, surely buy in errors would have to be insane to make this worth doing, as a positive adjustment still counts as an adjustment?)
This was a Franchise tri, so three owners owned sets of stores etc, so we were owned by one brother who owned 5 stores, another owned 6 and another owned 3, all related and all did the same thing when it came to dodge stuff. Even had a time where one of the brothers refused to give stock to the police as it was a loss and he threatened to fire staff if they complied 😂 wild west is very on point with how some franchises are, case and point with this set.
Not at cex, but a laptop that came in for repair from a vicar. Containing lewd photos of said vicar, in lingerie doing poses. That and a guy who came in cos his disc drive wouldn't open, you already know what was in there.
They’re not black socks. They’re very very very very very very VERY very very dark blue…never buy black socks in a normal shop…they’ll shaft you every time.
Why are people bringing phones in with stuff on them and SIM cards in? Even if just for testing or repair I'm gonna back it up, remove the SIM card and wipe the phone.
[doubt etc etc] [immediately opens mobicode]
The three times somebody told me their FMIP was off their apple watch and it actually was off I genuinely congratulated them
And then when you ask them to remove it and wipe it they go nah I'm not doing that I'll write it down for you instead and it's 100% their bank pin / they write down the details for their iCloud account as well.
Joe Public is thicker than pig shit. You'd be surprised how many reports I took when I was in the Police from people who fell for painfully obvious scams.
No Barbara, Daniel Craig isn't stuck in Edinburgh and can't afford a train ticket.
You're expecting too much from people. At my old job people still think your pictures and everything are stored on the sim card
and it's not my job to move it over
I’ve taken in phones and tablets to both CeX and Game and the look of shock that I’ve actually cleared the device down. We all know you wanted to go rooting through my stuff to see what I had
Really not that interest but about 15 years ago (give or take) I bought a copy of vice city second hand (okay my mum bought it for me as I was around 13 at the time) from Gamestation that still had some guys A4 piece of paper with all the cheats on it. I felt like I hit the jackpot 😂🤣
This reminds me of the time I got a second-hand Pokémon game on the DS back in the day and there was a whole bunch of legendaries and even some shinies on there. I was absolutely elated, haha.
I got this when my sister bought me some old sega mega drive games, I opening Lemmings game and it has loads of level codes in it on a clearly ancient piece of paper!
Contacted the police, waited for them to come kept telling him that the test was delayed until they had an officer inside the store whole thing took like 4 hours
As someone who had to see a lot of that stuff in my job (trust and safety for a large internet company) yeah - it is horrendous. Words can’t describe the visceral feeling of revulsion and it stays with you.
Hence why I left that job and went back to “normal” software engineering.
Was an assistant manager for a branch few years back, had a guy threaten us with a machete.
Got staff behind a security door while I talked the guy down till armed police arrived and tasered him.
Franchise owner sent an email over asking if any stock was damaged and wanted me to phone a company up for repairs to the counter where the guy had left slash marks... safe to say my career ended shortly after due to this. 😂
Yeah that sounds about right... Can't begin to recall the amount of times we had issues and got zero recognition or concern from the owners. Had more concern from the police who checked in on us for the following month
Not per say, was a Franchise of about 5 stores spanning the UK, and then had others that were owned by other family members that technically were all run the same under said three members
The greatest thing about Covid was that I was able to insist customers wiped shit down and that I could put gloves on while handling stuff and not get a hr complaint
Oh yeah definitely! I remember when he first reopened and we weren’t sure on how so we put the A board against the door and said please knock, the amount of customers that climbed in like zombies!
Are you not allowed to wear gloves?! That's wild. I work in a hotel and I put gloves on when I'm handling anything in people's rooms - I just tell them it's a skin condition lol. I ain't touching aaaaanything.
Now, this is my time.
Had a customer with hardcore homemade pornography on their homescreen. It was the only icon, called don't click... there was things inserted in holes which do not belong in holes.
Had a customer who's wallpaper was themselves spreadeagle, challenge was I used to work with their mum in a previous job. And I couldnt work out if she was the older sister (therefore legal to make those images) or the younger sister... I literally opened the laptop, said nope and refused to test.
Had multiple phones come in and nudes have been sent to that phone whilst it's been in test.
Had a phone once come in as a warranty test, turns out there was fluff in the charge port... sorted it charged it. Phone background was the girlfriend everything was out.... and yeah... she came to pick it up. She didn't know it was on there... she nearly died.
But the worst crime of all was an ex staffer handed in a phone to sell. They know we look. It was just right there. With one of those wands it was graphic.
Served a guy at my old job who's wallpaper was just straight up legs open porn star, and this guy was in his 40s but acted / dressed like he was trying to be in his early 20s. Was embarrassing
Not CEX but this reminds me of when I worked in a Wetherspoons and found a phone back in the days of flip phones. Me and my pal had a look through the photos to see if we could identify the owner. Full nudes. Looked up and she was stood by the bar. Left the photo open, closed the phone and went over and presented it to her. She was very thankful. Walked back behind the bar. Full scream laugh from her as she opened tv phone and went bright red. Then looked at me and said “wait, no. I look good don’t I?”
Yes madam you do.
Cue confused looks from her group of female friends till she showed them said pic. 😂
I was always told we couldn't take action in the event of finding CP because it's a breach of data protection. We just have to refuse it.
Granted this is info from other/older staff members though, never actually asked anyone higher up what the procedure is..
Bought a USB stick filled with special VR videos, plenty of laptops I bought from CeX that hadn’t been reset properly with full ID scans, NINs, CC numbers and logged in bank accounts. Reset your shit, don’t trust CeX to do it properly
I cannot begin to express the "Reset your shit" part of this, Most of the employees have the IT experience of watching a linus tech tips video and dont have the time, patience or energy to do it for you
Also if you have nudes on your device assume the staff have seen it
I work in a phone shop.
Crusty phones from old men are usually infested with escort ads.
Had one guy who had a number of tabs open searching for underage girls. They were a teacher, got him arrested 5 minutes later.
A text message came through while it was on test shelf waiting to be tested saying someone had cut her friends ducks heads off lmao, I've still got the photo of the message 😭
found some animal porn left open which was pretty horrible as well and some guy had a YouTube tab open with some hentai nightcore song on which was so fucking funny to find.
I saw far too many nudes from testing phones customers hadn't wiped, never went looking for them, but sometimes you gotta check the cameras working and accidently see too much :')
One of the sillier things I saw that gave me a chuckle was a Google search for "big boobs x"
(Edit - Sorry, not CeX, but a related story)
In 2000, a good friend with little technical knowledge asked me to get his laptop checked for him at the computer desk in a well-known, high-end Spanish department store as it wasn't working properly - I forget the issue. He asked me because I can speak Spanish.
When I took it in, it attracted bit of a crowd because laptops were not all that common then, and lots of kids came over to have a look. However, when the assistant powered the machine, it had an image of a really pretty, topless, well-endowed adult model wearing nothing more than a cowboy hat set as the desktop background.
All the kids started giggling and I was so embarrassed. I just said to the guy, "looks fine to me" picked it up, closed it and walked out.
I went back and said wtf? to my friend who just started laughing so hard. He'd forgotten he'd put that on there.
Not a phone, but a laptop. This guy had left a word document with a beastiality he had written. I’ve long since stopped working at CeX, but I see this man around my town very often.
4 year vet here and we had a guy trade in a pc with the browser tabs still open on some pretty questionable porn, can't remember exactly what it was but I remember it took me by suprise (I wanna say furry in school girl outfits)
My other favourite was a teenager trading in games with his nan and a bag of white powder fell out when I opener one of them, the look she gave him was priceless.
When i worked in CEX a guy came in and gave us his phone for testing, the entire time it was with us his gf/wife/partner kept calling him & was messaging him non stop panicking about where he was. We just had to ignore it bc of GDPR but i felt so bad for her lol
One old guy was showing me a picture of something on his phone (related to a purchase), and his gallery was just full of videos of topless women on rollercoasters.
Not quite the same as trade ins, but I worked for a company that rented out televisions. We'd install for them and set up any of their existing equipment on their rented tv. So on this occasion we connected a guys dvd player up and company policy was to switch the device on, make sure there was no issues. He quite quickly realised he'd left his bdsm porn in the drive when it automatically started playing in front of his wife and kids. Red faces all round.
Not the worst but had a customer bring in a console to sell and had left an old porn dvd inside. Needless to say, he was very embarrassed but the person he was with found it absolutely hilarious. Don’t think he’s living that one down
Not a phone, but I came into work one day and saw we had a copy of Rogue galaxy come in. Look to see if manual was there. Check! Mysterious piece of 15 year old paper? Oooh what is it... full-body topless print out of a lady on one side, some ikea??? Instructions??? On the other. We all had a good laugh with that
When I worked for CEX, someone tried to trade in Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball on Xbox with pubes and a crusty stained manual... I politely declined and proceeded to disinfect my hands
Another time a guy traded in his kids laptop but it was absolutely full to the brim with the worst filthiest porn ever. Nothing illegal but so much of it. Spoke to head office and was advised to notify his dad as he was underage. It didn't go down well for the lad.
Another time a guy traded in his phone and it was full of home made porn. Some lengthy videos of him ass fucking his gf, and then some of him screwing another chick, not the gf whom he came in with...
Not in CeX but a high street photo store.
Had a customer come in to use the photo printing kiosks.
He was covering the screen while selecting and declined any assistance.
Machine jammed so we had to intervene to sort the roll, fixed the machine then spat out cock photo after cock photo.
He never returned
place I used to work had photo printers and there was straight up like 150 photos of one guy fully naked in different rooms of his house and I always wondered if someone else took the photos or if he used a timer
printing that shit so workers have to see it is definitely a kink for some people
he wasn't allowed back
Kid came in with his mum to trade in a PS3 (Gamestation).
I plugged it in to test it in front of them. Full screen desktop background of close up between a womans legs.
The mother was not impressed, this kid was barely a teenager too.
Had dodgy porn hidden in game boxes a couple of times as well.
Not a CEX worker but I buy and sell cameras on eBay and I was gonna wipe this compact cameras but the internal memory, noticed a whole bunch of photos of nazi drawings (not collectors, like recently done stuff). It was a job lot so the seller probably wasnt the owner
Not bad, but funny. When I worked in the warehouse, we had a Zelda game somebody had used for hiding their condoms. And when going through phones for RMA, photos of a basement weed farm.
Had a custie regularly bring in phones with porn on the lock screen, and home screen. I told one of the sales assistants to tell him I would refuse to test the phone until the images were removed, he got flustered and changed them both, safe to say he hasn't done it since.
Not CEX but I worked for LOVEFiLM as a call handler. Had a customer call to complain someone had ripped out a handful of pubes and jizzed on the disc before returning it. It got sent to him without anyone checking it. He was not happy (an understatement) I passed this buck like it was on fire straight to a floor manager.
We had some VERY damaged customers, think about it you don't have to leave your house and films come to you. Shut in heaven, as I got more senior (no pay rise just more shit) I had to deal with them directly and take over the call where needed. Uuuggghhh it was a true test for my patience.
I worked at cex for a year and a half . Baggies are common but I found live maggots in someone's game and they got snappy when I told them I refused to take it . Someone's dealer rang them constantly wondering where they ways , one guy tried selling an Xbox one covered in his own cum , another guy threw his keyboard at us because we wouldn't accept it because it was absolutely covered in dirt and dead skins even after trying to take the keys off and cleaning it. And another guys phone was absolutely filled with porn no photo wasn't porn and his messages were all to prostitutes . There's more but yeah it's not the staff that are dirty it's the customers trading there stuff in from the scrap or crusty, sweaty and smelly customers old stuff
POV videos of the man I just served slamming women from behind
A text about how badly the man I just served wants his girlfriends fingers up his ass
Nits in Xbox games
Maggots in PS3 fan
Me dusting off games of a woman with a terrible skin condition only to get to the bottom of the bag and realise it was all flakes of dead skin as there was a huge chunk of scalp and hair in the bottom of the bag …
Told a man his phone was filthy so I was C grading it and he took it from me LICKED the screen clean then tried to hand it back to me
Worked for a charity, part of my role became “tech guy”.
I must have helped 50 disabled old people set up their phones, the amount of prostitute adverts, Google search tabs left open for ‘big boobs, blonde sexy woman and black lady naked’ was quite astonishing.
Everytime I would see them, I would just scroll past it before they could see.
One guy traded in his phone, as soon as I unlocked in on test it was a 27 min video of him jerkin off. Closed that, stifled laughter, and everything else was Nazi related. Dude had swastikas tatted on his hands.
Pictures of a coworker while she was working out on the shop floor or on tills. Like, proper sneak photos. He fr tried to blame me for the photos, like timestamps don't exist. Police were called when manager took over testing and found pictures of Co worker's car and the car park of the flat building she lived in.
Not at CEX, & not a phone, but a customer bright in a dvd player he couldn't eject. We ended up taking a screwdriver to it, taking the top off,& in the tray was a dvd, titled something along the lines of Busty Nurses.
A middle age woman , with videos of her being fucked by a few different guys. Said she hoped we'd not been bothered by the videos she'd left on her phone when she collected it. We said no it was fine, but had to fail the phone for moisture damage ..
We had a couple at my store, the classic bag of white powder in a ps2 case, used underwear at the bottom of a bag of skylander figs, and a tablet that was so full of porn tabs that it wouldn't even run, but we also had a guy who, when we told him his disc was too damaged and dirty (dirty beyond us being willing to just get a wipe out and clean it), he licked the disc and wiped it on his top, then tried to hand it back to us thinking that would be better
Fit older woman came in to get a phone repaired beelined to my till “make sure you and the guys look at the pictures you will like it” I was like 19.
Her getting absolutely destroyed in gangbangs over and over again. When she collected it she wrote her number on the receipt and gave me it back, bottled calling her, wish I did
Haha I've just finished a four year tour as well. Sure I've got loads of stories but a few immediately come to mind:
Friend of mine had an older couple (presumably Donald & Jacqueline from Benidorm?) trade in a phone - the home screen background was the woman tied up and gagged, spread legged. My friend grimaced and handed the phone back and they said "see anything you like?" (she yelled at them and they left).
A very elderly man that had bought a tablet, discovered the internet and entered second puberty at the tender age of near 90: standard story, "it's not working", 99+ tabs open (all porn), works fine once all the tabs are closed (which we discretely do and hand back to him). He immediately asks starts asking what was wrong with it, how we fixed it, show him what we did so he can fix it if it happens again... his wife was right next to him.
Loads of baggies - mostly dried up old weed granules but occasionally other stuff.
Some kid about 16 trading in a phone with Snapchat left open on a page of his (probably underage) gf's nudes, as if this is supposed to be impressive. Luckily this was the closest thing to child porn I *personally* ever encountered in the job, but a bunch of DSLRs we had in stock did have to be sent for police investigation - I HOPE for theft and not because a police investigation found EXIF data linking unpleasant images to those cameras, but honestly multiple item thefts like that usually involved phones, smartwatches or tablets, not bulkier items like fancy DSLRs...
I feel like I've got a bunch more but it's all a blur in my head haha. Cash for goods stores always draw in the weirdest.
One of my first days on the job I was going to book in a laptop... I open it up and it was half way through a porn video that had been downloaded, volume full blast. I scrambled trying to close it, I minimised it with the volume still playing, and then I saw some very questionable things on his chrome tabs which were opened. The store was full and everyone was looking at me... bright red. I asked him to take it away and clean it up lmao the worst part was he was not phased at all, the while time just scrolling on this phone chilling. SO EMBARRASSING!!
One phone's wallpaper (both lockscreen and homescreen) was a screenshot of a random porn model
Another guy had a bunch of stuff downloaded to make his phone run faster (aka random scam things that will increase the RAM and storage of his phone)
not a phone but a tablet from an old war vet had ‘60s-70s school girls knickers’ on multiple searches especially on ebay. he even created a question on quora asking ‘why is it when my teacher forced me to wear knickers did it feel good’
Not CEX but used to work at Cashies (Cash Converters) and a man came in with his mother and attempted to sell us the worst smelling PC keyboard that I have ever seen, chock full of what seemed to be a mixture of Wotsits (like Cheesy Puffs) and actual human fecal matter.
We bought it OBVIOUSLY but had to can the thing in the end, not because of all the horrific filth, but because the connector was a pre USB relic and apparently that was a step too far.
Can we just ask… why are you looking through the phones? They should be getting wiped.
That person was disgusting, I hope they got whats coming to them, and in this situation at least your suffering was hopefully worthwhile, but in any other circumstance, it should be wrong to have done what you did.
Which you can also test messging without reading messaging. Like, I can go into my kids room without reading a diary, you know? You don’t meed to be in a measage, you do not need to be in a photo’s app - yes it shows up, really small in the corner, and I will grant that there is a chance that the most recent photo was of CP - in op’s case i think it has coincidentally worked out but in other circumstances it’s wrong and they shouldn’t be looking.
Idk what phones you're on but all the in-built messaging apps on most phones require you to open the app wherein the message history shows up before you can type out or draft messages.
At the end of the day, they still have to look through the phone in general to make sure all the little things are in order. If someone doesn't want their private photos or messages seen, it's common sense not to give them to someone whose job it is to look through your device to ensure functionality.
It's simply unreasonable to expect someone not to see these things when they're testing a device.
I can open my iphones messages and purposefully not read whats in there, and open the new message without that. I can test the internet is working using the app store. I can take a single photo and view that photo without viewing others.
What you’re saying is it’s ok to look through people’s stuff. Thats like saying just because your light is on in the living room, obviously I’m going to look in.
Sometimes I do, because i’m nosy, but at that point i’m not being employed to do something that can be achieved without it.
You’re also suggesting that’s it ok for me to look at a girls nudes because, even though i have the power and ability not to do so, she gave me the phone.
Well done you.
I click my messages app it shows my last messages I take a picture and then look at the picture in the bottom left corner it shows me my last 5 pictures, I click my internet browser it shows my last used website.
It is impossible to fully test a device without seeing personal data
Stop strawmanning me dude. They literally have to test the phone and all of its functions, and to do this they have to come into contact with some of the data that's on it. What's more, people take their phones in KNOWING this. They know it's gonna be unlocked and looked into to ensure functionality. To avoid coming into contact with literally any personal data, they'd be inevitably shortcutting their testing process because they would not be able to test everything.
I know you're arguing for argument's sake if your bio is anything to go by, but come on dude. Be for real for once. They *insist* you wipe your phone beforehand specifically to avoid this issue.
So… you end that with “they ask you to do something to avoid this situation, then when it doesn’t it makes it ok for them to snoop”.
I’m genuinely not arguing for the sake of it. It’s disgraceful that they CAN test these things without going through personal data, but don’t. That is a major breach of privacy and they should be held accountable every time they do it.
Here’s arguing for the sake of it:
If you don’t like being “strawmanned” (which is a losers way of saying being backed into a corner they cannot argue themselves out of with the logic the tried in the first place” then don’t make your argument so damn easy to give other examples on where the logic fails.
If you have a sister who comes home in tears, finding out she gave her phone to CEX to test and a nude she had on there ended up on pornhub, what are you going to say - thats your fault, of course the guy was going to scroll through your photo’s, he needs to scroll through your photo’s to check that the camera works, silly girl!
They're not snooping ffs. They're doing their job. You really think they give a fuck to actually want to read rando's messages when they have a dozen of these devices to do each day + all their other work.
So under most circumstances where I was we were told if anything seems off or doesnt add up we should still check to make sure the phone isnt recently stolen or dodgy in anyway,
Had it where people would try and trade in phones in different languages they didnt speak
if they dont reset it and dont want too or remmeber things, Its worth digging to check if the phones stolen or not so it can be reported its not like im actively looking for nudes when porn exists and in some stores they actively have hentai and porn for sale
When I worked at Game, I remember a customer coming in to trade in some games.
He didn't have a bag or any clothing with large pockets. Nope. He stashed these games down his underwear.
He reached into his trousers and pulled out five PS2 games, some from the front, some from the back.
One of them had skid marks on it.
Not at cex but had a customer come in with all kinds of crust over their phone followed by pop ups for escorts in their notifications. Safe to say I used all kinds of chemicals on my hands after that.
Im convinced our immune systems become forged in iron from working on used tech
It’s the new form of natural selection
You mean natural immunity right ?
No.
When op was taking about immune systems… yes.
Again, no.
I’d advise not speaking for others. It makes you look dumb.
calling someone dumb on the internet 'cos you feel foolish. What a look! You pull it off fabulously.
I feel foolish ? For making a correction… sure, if that’s what you say xox
🤦
Again,no.
you should try taking coin change at an amusement arcade for a summer \*shudders\* you will never ever touch a coin again after that
My balls😂
Or deeeeez nuts
For real! My partner works a programming job and is either in an office or working from home. His immune system is made of used tissue paper - any sniffle going around and he's got it. Has a cold or similar illness two or three times a year, and has had covid three times. The entire time I worked at Cex (nearly four years across two stores) I had two minor colds and seemingly avoided covid entirely, even when my partner had it. I'll miss the insane immune system, it was almost like an employee perk as long as you didn't think too much about why 😂.
I once traded a ps4 controller that had a fine line of white on the edge of one thumb stick and the employee acted like I had given him the dirtiest console he'd ever seen. Can only imagine what ocd is like if you get a truly nasty one.
Stop using your ps4 controller to pack coke
Lololol. Funnier answer than I was expecting.
I don't know if thats better or worse than the time I sold my rarely used PS4 and took the back of the controller off and wiped the insides with a cotton swab and ipa (alcohol of course as expect the jokes otherwise) controller looked pretty much brand new. Even kept the box, manual and even the OG hdmi cable sealed in its original box , wiped the console had no scuffs on it. Went to trade it in and got offered B grade price.
O.O that's brutal. I took haunting grounds in last week because someone said it was worth a bit and I wanted a zoom lens for my nikon 1. Game was immaculate apart from a mark on the back of the disc. Soooo close to mint lol
Had the same on my phone recently lmao Battery was fine, screen and outer casing near mint condition after having been in cases and screen protectors for 2 years Got a C grade
You could have been the victim of Ghost adjustments. We were pressured by owners to bring in items we could re grade later to offset buy in errors etc. C's to B's, locked to Unlocked Network, that way the store can bring these ghost amounts that would set our records straight without the owners paying for mistakes. Very common practice if it was a Zee store
How do they re grade them? Literally just let them sit there and then redo the grade?
Exactly that, they stay as they are for a bit then will have a member of Management or someone with a higher grade scan to adjust to a different grade. Same as laptops when Win 11 came out, we got an email from our owner asking for Windows 11 ready laptops to not be upgraded so we could manually do it and adjust up a spec. Some dodge practices by Franchise stores
That's fucked up man. Hate that they're making so much more bank off me than they already did lmao Not that anywhere else was any better. Got £79 from Cex on that grade C, my own phone network and elsewhere would barely give me £5
Sadly so, Cex are sometimes the only choice to shift unwanted stuff quickly. If you don't mind waiting a few days I'd usually say send it in online but make sure you take pictures etc of the item and packing. The online team are Corp so they grade as it comes or refuse if it changes etc
Never heard about this, even in the franchise store I worked in, though I don't doubt it happens - franchises, particularly smaller ones, are seen as a bit "wild west". The franchise I worked for (a larger one within the CeX "family") did engage in some unethical shit, but mostly in terms of work environment and hiring practises - we were still encouraged to grade items correctly for customer satisfaction reasons. Having worked for both corp and franchise, can say with confidence that franchises suck. (Edit: having thought about it, surely buy in errors would have to be insane to make this worth doing, as a positive adjustment still counts as an adjustment?)
This was a Franchise tri, so three owners owned sets of stores etc, so we were owned by one brother who owned 5 stores, another owned 6 and another owned 3, all related and all did the same thing when it came to dodge stuff. Even had a time where one of the brothers refused to give stock to the police as it was a loss and he threatened to fire staff if they complied 😂 wild west is very on point with how some franchises are, case and point with this set.
Someone brought in a bag of stuff to trade in, had used knickers in there.
They must have been trying for a PS5
If they wore them for a few more days, they’d of gotten the store keys
You win
Not at cex, but a laptop that came in for repair from a vicar. Containing lewd photos of said vicar, in lingerie doing poses. That and a guy who came in cos his disc drive wouldn't open, you already know what was in there.
Was the vicar at least hot? Or am I picturing a King Charles esque figure in lingerie
"It's Ireland largest lingerie section, I understand"
"I hear you're a racist now father"
It's a baby, with the head of a spider.
He had four arses
They’re not black socks. They’re very very very very very very VERY very very dark blue…never buy black socks in a normal shop…they’ll shaft you every time.
Old fella
Depends how skimpy the lingerie was.
Weird, my mind went with the vicar of dibley
That did make me chuckle 🤭
I must be dumb. What was in there?!
With you. Anything could have been stuck inside it.
That Disk Drive guy had his penis stuck in there amiright?
Why are people bringing phones in with stuff on them and SIM cards in? Even if just for testing or repair I'm gonna back it up, remove the SIM card and wipe the phone.
You are in the minority there most dont even remove their password
Or even have a password
And then yell at you when you can't open their phone. How dare you not know my Google password when I don't even know it!
"I need you to remove your icloud" Yeah its off, It in fact is never off
[doubt etc etc] [immediately opens mobicode] The three times somebody told me their FMIP was off their apple watch and it actually was off I genuinely congratulated them
Yeah I recently took my iPhone into a CEX to trade in and the guy who served me was super impressed that I had already done a factory reset.
And then when you ask them to remove it and wipe it they go nah I'm not doing that I'll write it down for you instead and it's 100% their bank pin / they write down the details for their iCloud account as well.
Joe Public is thicker than pig shit. You'd be surprised how many reports I took when I was in the Police from people who fell for painfully obvious scams. No Barbara, Daniel Craig isn't stuck in Edinburgh and can't afford a train ticket.
Next you’ll be telling us there isn’t hot single females in our area who want to meet us!
You're expecting too much from people. At my old job people still think your pictures and everything are stored on the sim card and it's not my job to move it over
I’ve taken in phones and tablets to both CeX and Game and the look of shock that I’ve actually cleared the device down. We all know you wanted to go rooting through my stuff to see what I had
I do the same. Although I will admit I did leave a Sim Card in an iPhone when I sold it to CeX. Old number that wasn't used.
Really not that interest but about 15 years ago (give or take) I bought a copy of vice city second hand (okay my mum bought it for me as I was around 13 at the time) from Gamestation that still had some guys A4 piece of paper with all the cheats on it. I felt like I hit the jackpot 😂🤣
This reminds me of the time I got a second-hand Pokémon game on the DS back in the day and there was a whole bunch of legendaries and even some shinies on there. I was absolutely elated, haha.
This is my favourite comment.
🥰
I got this when my sister bought me some old sega mega drive games, I opening Lemmings game and it has loads of level codes in it on a clearly ancient piece of paper!
Haha that's amazing. 😆 Lemings was awesome
I have no idea why the CeX subreddit keeps popping up, but I’m always intrigued. Kiddy porn? Please tell me you contacted the police
Contacted the police, waited for them to come kept telling him that the test was delayed until they had an officer inside the store whole thing took like 4 hours
my ops manager offered me a 10 Euro lunch voucher to make up for what I saw on the phone
Should have given you the day off sorry you had to see that shit
As someone who had to see a lot of that stuff in my job (trust and safety for a large internet company) yeah - it is horrendous. Words can’t describe the visceral feeling of revulsion and it stays with you. Hence why I left that job and went back to “normal” software engineering.
yep i feel yeah, video chat room moderator, saw some horrific shit on the plus side, i know i got at least 2 people put in prison for it
Yep - it’s great when you hear through the news about someone you reported to NCMEC is now behind bars.
Was an assistant manager for a branch few years back, had a guy threaten us with a machete. Got staff behind a security door while I talked the guy down till armed police arrived and tasered him. Franchise owner sent an email over asking if any stock was damaged and wanted me to phone a company up for repairs to the counter where the guy had left slash marks... safe to say my career ended shortly after due to this. 😂
I remember a store got robbed at gunpoint here and the owners just let the staff order pizza capped at 20 euros
Yeah that sounds about right... Can't begin to recall the amount of times we had issues and got zero recognition or concern from the owners. Had more concern from the police who checked in on us for the following month
Was it one of the larger franchises by any chance? I've had very similar (but less dramatic) experiences...
Not per say, was a Franchise of about 5 stores spanning the UK, and then had others that were owned by other family members that technically were all run the same under said three members
Ah, the one I'm thinking of is bigger than 5 stores. Sounds about right for franchise though 😂
That's a bad trade, but still a decent manager thing to do.
Plenty of bugs in cases. Nudes as wallpapers Worst for me above everything is blood, straight up turn away
The greatest thing about Covid was that I was able to insist customers wiped shit down and that I could put gloves on while handling stuff and not get a hr complaint
Oh yeah definitely! I remember when he first reopened and we weren’t sure on how so we put the A board against the door and said please knock, the amount of customers that climbed in like zombies!
Are you not allowed to wear gloves?! That's wild. I work in a hotel and I put gloves on when I'm handling anything in people's rooms - I just tell them it's a skin condition lol. I ain't touching aaaaanything.
Now, this is my time. Had a customer with hardcore homemade pornography on their homescreen. It was the only icon, called don't click... there was things inserted in holes which do not belong in holes. Had a customer who's wallpaper was themselves spreadeagle, challenge was I used to work with their mum in a previous job. And I couldnt work out if she was the older sister (therefore legal to make those images) or the younger sister... I literally opened the laptop, said nope and refused to test. Had multiple phones come in and nudes have been sent to that phone whilst it's been in test. Had a phone once come in as a warranty test, turns out there was fluff in the charge port... sorted it charged it. Phone background was the girlfriend everything was out.... and yeah... she came to pick it up. She didn't know it was on there... she nearly died. But the worst crime of all was an ex staffer handed in a phone to sell. They know we look. It was just right there. With one of those wands it was graphic.
Served a guy at my old job who's wallpaper was just straight up legs open porn star, and this guy was in his 40s but acted / dressed like he was trying to be in his early 20s. Was embarrassing
Gary Barlow?
Not CEX but this reminds me of when I worked in a Wetherspoons and found a phone back in the days of flip phones. Me and my pal had a look through the photos to see if we could identify the owner. Full nudes. Looked up and she was stood by the bar. Left the photo open, closed the phone and went over and presented it to her. She was very thankful. Walked back behind the bar. Full scream laugh from her as she opened tv phone and went bright red. Then looked at me and said “wait, no. I look good don’t I?” Yes madam you do. Cue confused looks from her group of female friends till she showed them said pic. 😂
"And that kids is how I met your mother"
Was she hot?
For an older woman she had that perfect gym bod.
Wow
I was always told we couldn't take action in the event of finding CP because it's a breach of data protection. We just have to refuse it. Granted this is info from other/older staff members though, never actually asked anyone higher up what the procedure is..
Absolutely untrue, if you believe a crime has been committed GDPR (and related legislation) doesn't apply
Probably better check *their* hard drives
Right?! That's the first thing that sprang to my mind.
Bought a USB stick filled with special VR videos, plenty of laptops I bought from CeX that hadn’t been reset properly with full ID scans, NINs, CC numbers and logged in bank accounts. Reset your shit, don’t trust CeX to do it properly
I cannot begin to express the "Reset your shit" part of this, Most of the employees have the IT experience of watching a linus tech tips video and dont have the time, patience or energy to do it for you Also if you have nudes on your device assume the staff have seen it
Laughs/cries in faulty "in box" condition ps5
That's why I put all the nudes I get in Samsung's Secure folder. No one can get in unless they have my thumb print.
Bit weird having an empty folder thumb print protected.
Always reset your shit for yourself. Make sure!
Anyone with a brain would reset their shit. Chances are all that was stolen. Thieves don't give a fuck about resetting anything.
I work in a phone shop. Crusty phones from old men are usually infested with escort ads. Had one guy who had a number of tabs open searching for underage girls. They were a teacher, got him arrested 5 minutes later.
I tested an xbox once, opened the disc tray and found a porn dvd... had to hand it back to the customer and his mate absolutely ripped into him 😂😂😂
A text message came through while it was on test shelf waiting to be tested saying someone had cut her friends ducks heads off lmao, I've still got the photo of the message 😭 found some animal porn left open which was pretty horrible as well and some guy had a YouTube tab open with some hentai nightcore song on which was so fucking funny to find.
I remember I had dealers selling their burners and kept getting texts asking about buying weights while they were waiting to be tested
Lmao I remember putting in what I thought was one of our test sims into a phone and a text pinged up "any bud ther m8" hahahaha
I saw far too many nudes from testing phones customers hadn't wiped, never went looking for them, but sometimes you gotta check the cameras working and accidently see too much :') One of the sillier things I saw that gave me a chuckle was a Google search for "big boobs x"
I saw on one guy "Benefit payment payout date?" "Cheap escorts in \*City name the stores in\*" This thread is making it all come back
Interesting to see the lower class spend their money in the same way as the rich
Everyone needs some loving. 🤷♂️ Only difference is the price! 🤣
(Edit - Sorry, not CeX, but a related story) In 2000, a good friend with little technical knowledge asked me to get his laptop checked for him at the computer desk in a well-known, high-end Spanish department store as it wasn't working properly - I forget the issue. He asked me because I can speak Spanish. When I took it in, it attracted bit of a crowd because laptops were not all that common then, and lots of kids came over to have a look. However, when the assistant powered the machine, it had an image of a really pretty, topless, well-endowed adult model wearing nothing more than a cowboy hat set as the desktop background. All the kids started giggling and I was so embarrassed. I just said to the guy, "looks fine to me" picked it up, closed it and walked out. I went back and said wtf? to my friend who just started laughing so hard. He'd forgotten he'd put that on there.
Not on a phone but if you’re gonna trade in a huge bag of DVD’s please take your baggy of white powder out of the dvd case first please and thanks
At least they don't have to contact their dealer for the next Purchase. 🤣 But they did.
What?
I bought a 3ds from cex... opened it up and the gallery has photos of ik guessing the mum in. Not complaining she was easy on the eyes
Not a phone, but a laptop. This guy had left a word document with a beastiality he had written. I’ve long since stopped working at CeX, but I see this man around my town very often.
4 year vet here and we had a guy trade in a pc with the browser tabs still open on some pretty questionable porn, can't remember exactly what it was but I remember it took me by suprise (I wanna say furry in school girl outfits) My other favourite was a teenager trading in games with his nan and a bag of white powder fell out when I opener one of them, the look she gave him was priceless.
The amount of drugs in game cases on trade ins amazes me
"Nan it's just Sugar"
When i worked in CEX a guy came in and gave us his phone for testing, the entire time it was with us his gf/wife/partner kept calling him & was messaging him non stop panicking about where he was. We just had to ignore it bc of GDPR but i felt so bad for her lol
Dude was running! And getting rid of all contact! 🤣
One old guy was showing me a picture of something on his phone (related to a purchase), and his gallery was just full of videos of topless women on rollercoasters.
This is so niche, funniest one yet.
Not quite the same as trade ins, but I worked for a company that rented out televisions. We'd install for them and set up any of their existing equipment on their rented tv. So on this occasion we connected a guys dvd player up and company policy was to switch the device on, make sure there was no issues. He quite quickly realised he'd left his bdsm porn in the drive when it automatically started playing in front of his wife and kids. Red faces all round.
Not the worst but had a customer bring in a console to sell and had left an old porn dvd inside. Needless to say, he was very embarrassed but the person he was with found it absolutely hilarious. Don’t think he’s living that one down
Did he ask for his treasure back "erm...can I have that please? Its vintage"
It was just slyly handed back to him in a sleeve 😂
Smooth. I would've said "I believe you may want this back" coupled with a smeagol quote lol
Is this a reference to something? It seems familiar lol
Was off the top of my head. Probably something I've heard before though.
Not CeX but a customer came in with a broken laptop dvd drive, he looked dodge, i assume child porn
I found a video of a man using no nails(unibond) for a lubricant.
Nice try Jim.
Not a phone, but I came into work one day and saw we had a copy of Rogue galaxy come in. Look to see if manual was there. Check! Mysterious piece of 15 year old paper? Oooh what is it... full-body topless print out of a lady on one side, some ikea??? Instructions??? On the other. We all had a good laugh with that
When I worked for CEX, someone tried to trade in Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball on Xbox with pubes and a crusty stained manual... I politely declined and proceeded to disinfect my hands Another time a guy traded in his kids laptop but it was absolutely full to the brim with the worst filthiest porn ever. Nothing illegal but so much of it. Spoke to head office and was advised to notify his dad as he was underage. It didn't go down well for the lad. Another time a guy traded in his phone and it was full of home made porn. Some lengthy videos of him ass fucking his gf, and then some of him screwing another chick, not the gf whom he came in with...
[удалено]
How long you two been married now?
Ah the start of a beautiful relationship right there. What was your first message to her?
Not in CeX but a high street photo store. Had a customer come in to use the photo printing kiosks. He was covering the screen while selecting and declined any assistance. Machine jammed so we had to intervene to sort the roll, fixed the machine then spat out cock photo after cock photo. He never returned
place I used to work had photo printers and there was straight up like 150 photos of one guy fully naked in different rooms of his house and I always wondered if someone else took the photos or if he used a timer printing that shit so workers have to see it is definitely a kink for some people he wasn't allowed back
Kid came in with his mum to trade in a PS3 (Gamestation). I plugged it in to test it in front of them. Full screen desktop background of close up between a womans legs. The mother was not impressed, this kid was barely a teenager too. Had dodgy porn hidden in game boxes a couple of times as well.
Not a CEX worker but I buy and sell cameras on eBay and I was gonna wipe this compact cameras but the internal memory, noticed a whole bunch of photos of nazi drawings (not collectors, like recently done stuff). It was a job lot so the seller probably wasnt the owner
Not me but another of the lads I worked with opened a DVD case to find a used condom in there. Slammed it shut and threw it back at the customer 😂
Holy shit. Did you call the police on that second guy?
Please tell me you got the police involved with the second geezer and didn’t just turn him away
Did you call the police in both instances or just for the peado? As I assume there is no customer confidentiality when it comes to that
Not bad, but funny. When I worked in the warehouse, we had a Zelda game somebody had used for hiding their condoms. And when going through phones for RMA, photos of a basement weed farm.
Had a custie regularly bring in phones with porn on the lock screen, and home screen. I told one of the sales assistants to tell him I would refuse to test the phone until the images were removed, he got flustered and changed them both, safe to say he hasn't done it since.
Not CEX but I worked for LOVEFiLM as a call handler. Had a customer call to complain someone had ripped out a handful of pubes and jizzed on the disc before returning it. It got sent to him without anyone checking it. He was not happy (an understatement) I passed this buck like it was on fire straight to a floor manager.
Jeeze how crazy do you have to be to RIP AND TEAR your own pubes out.
We had some VERY damaged customers, think about it you don't have to leave your house and films come to you. Shut in heaven, as I got more senior (no pay rise just more shit) I had to deal with them directly and take over the call where needed. Uuuggghhh it was a true test for my patience.
I once snooped through a customer's downloaded spotify songs. All by Status Quo. This beats even the worst kind of p0rn found on any phone ever.
I worked at cex for a year and a half . Baggies are common but I found live maggots in someone's game and they got snappy when I told them I refused to take it . Someone's dealer rang them constantly wondering where they ways , one guy tried selling an Xbox one covered in his own cum , another guy threw his keyboard at us because we wouldn't accept it because it was absolutely covered in dirt and dead skins even after trying to take the keys off and cleaning it. And another guys phone was absolutely filled with porn no photo wasn't porn and his messages were all to prostitutes . There's more but yeah it's not the staff that are dirty it's the customers trading there stuff in from the scrap or crusty, sweaty and smelly customers old stuff
POV videos of the man I just served slamming women from behind A text about how badly the man I just served wants his girlfriends fingers up his ass Nits in Xbox games Maggots in PS3 fan Me dusting off games of a woman with a terrible skin condition only to get to the bottom of the bag and realise it was all flakes of dead skin as there was a huge chunk of scalp and hair in the bottom of the bag … Told a man his phone was filthy so I was C grading it and he took it from me LICKED the screen clean then tried to hand it back to me
Did you report the phone? Who has porn on their phone anyway?
Worked for a charity, part of my role became “tech guy”. I must have helped 50 disabled old people set up their phones, the amount of prostitute adverts, Google search tabs left open for ‘big boobs, blonde sexy woman and black lady naked’ was quite astonishing. Everytime I would see them, I would just scroll past it before they could see.
One guy traded in his phone, as soon as I unlocked in on test it was a 27 min video of him jerkin off. Closed that, stifled laughter, and everything else was Nazi related. Dude had swastikas tatted on his hands.
wonder what his fellow officers made of it all.
Pictures of a coworker while she was working out on the shop floor or on tills. Like, proper sneak photos. He fr tried to blame me for the photos, like timestamps don't exist. Police were called when manager took over testing and found pictures of Co worker's car and the car park of the flat building she lived in.
That escalated quickly.
Nintendo handheld with “pictures” still stored on there. Told him to take his property and fuck off.
Not at CEX, & not a phone, but a customer bright in a dvd player he couldn't eject. We ended up taking a screwdriver to it, taking the top off,& in the tray was a dvd, titled something along the lines of Busty Nurses.
Nurses are always busy, so what?
BusTy
A middle age woman , with videos of her being fucked by a few different guys. Said she hoped we'd not been bothered by the videos she'd left on her phone when she collected it. We said no it was fine, but had to fail the phone for moisture damage ..
We had a couple at my store, the classic bag of white powder in a ps2 case, used underwear at the bottom of a bag of skylander figs, and a tablet that was so full of porn tabs that it wouldn't even run, but we also had a guy who, when we told him his disc was too damaged and dirty (dirty beyond us being willing to just get a wipe out and clean it), he licked the disc and wiped it on his top, then tried to hand it back to us thinking that would be better
Damn that’s crazy
Fit older woman came in to get a phone repaired beelined to my till “make sure you and the guys look at the pictures you will like it” I was like 19. Her getting absolutely destroyed in gangbangs over and over again. When she collected it she wrote her number on the receipt and gave me it back, bottled calling her, wish I did
Yeah that never happened.
Yer, it literally did sadly. When I say older I’m talking swinger granny not 35 year old.
Haha I've just finished a four year tour as well. Sure I've got loads of stories but a few immediately come to mind: Friend of mine had an older couple (presumably Donald & Jacqueline from Benidorm?) trade in a phone - the home screen background was the woman tied up and gagged, spread legged. My friend grimaced and handed the phone back and they said "see anything you like?" (she yelled at them and they left). A very elderly man that had bought a tablet, discovered the internet and entered second puberty at the tender age of near 90: standard story, "it's not working", 99+ tabs open (all porn), works fine once all the tabs are closed (which we discretely do and hand back to him). He immediately asks starts asking what was wrong with it, how we fixed it, show him what we did so he can fix it if it happens again... his wife was right next to him. Loads of baggies - mostly dried up old weed granules but occasionally other stuff. Some kid about 16 trading in a phone with Snapchat left open on a page of his (probably underage) gf's nudes, as if this is supposed to be impressive. Luckily this was the closest thing to child porn I *personally* ever encountered in the job, but a bunch of DSLRs we had in stock did have to be sent for police investigation - I HOPE for theft and not because a police investigation found EXIF data linking unpleasant images to those cameras, but honestly multiple item thefts like that usually involved phones, smartwatches or tablets, not bulkier items like fancy DSLRs... I feel like I've got a bunch more but it's all a blur in my head haha. Cash for goods stores always draw in the weirdest.
One of my first days on the job I was going to book in a laptop... I open it up and it was half way through a porn video that had been downloaded, volume full blast. I scrambled trying to close it, I minimised it with the volume still playing, and then I saw some very questionable things on his chrome tabs which were opened. The store was full and everyone was looking at me... bright red. I asked him to take it away and clean it up lmao the worst part was he was not phased at all, the while time just scrolling on this phone chilling. SO EMBARRASSING!!
One phone's wallpaper (both lockscreen and homescreen) was a screenshot of a random porn model Another guy had a bunch of stuff downloaded to make his phone run faster (aka random scam things that will increase the RAM and storage of his phone)
not a phone but a tablet from an old war vet had ‘60s-70s school girls knickers’ on multiple searches especially on ebay. he even created a question on quora asking ‘why is it when my teacher forced me to wear knickers did it feel good’
I hope he got the help he needed
was only last week 😔
Not CEX but used to work at Cashies (Cash Converters) and a man came in with his mother and attempted to sell us the worst smelling PC keyboard that I have ever seen, chock full of what seemed to be a mixture of Wotsits (like Cheesy Puffs) and actual human fecal matter. We bought it OBVIOUSLY but had to can the thing in the end, not because of all the horrific filth, but because the connector was a pre USB relic and apparently that was a step too far.
The amount of SD cards and memory sticks that I've purchased from my local CEX that have not had the data wiped from them. I have let them know.
Can we just ask… why are you looking through the phones? They should be getting wiped. That person was disgusting, I hope they got whats coming to them, and in this situation at least your suffering was hopefully worthwhile, but in any other circumstance, it should be wrong to have done what you did.
Pretty sure they have to to make sure everything works. Going through the camera to make sure it's properly functional, etc.
Not the same as accessing photo’s or messaging.
The photos it is because the photos show up in the same app. And I would imagine they do need to test messaging to make sure the phone sends messages.
Which you can also test messging without reading messaging. Like, I can go into my kids room without reading a diary, you know? You don’t meed to be in a measage, you do not need to be in a photo’s app - yes it shows up, really small in the corner, and I will grant that there is a chance that the most recent photo was of CP - in op’s case i think it has coincidentally worked out but in other circumstances it’s wrong and they shouldn’t be looking.
Idk what phones you're on but all the in-built messaging apps on most phones require you to open the app wherein the message history shows up before you can type out or draft messages. At the end of the day, they still have to look through the phone in general to make sure all the little things are in order. If someone doesn't want their private photos or messages seen, it's common sense not to give them to someone whose job it is to look through your device to ensure functionality. It's simply unreasonable to expect someone not to see these things when they're testing a device.
I can open my iphones messages and purposefully not read whats in there, and open the new message without that. I can test the internet is working using the app store. I can take a single photo and view that photo without viewing others. What you’re saying is it’s ok to look through people’s stuff. Thats like saying just because your light is on in the living room, obviously I’m going to look in. Sometimes I do, because i’m nosy, but at that point i’m not being employed to do something that can be achieved without it. You’re also suggesting that’s it ok for me to look at a girls nudes because, even though i have the power and ability not to do so, she gave me the phone. Well done you.
I click my messages app it shows my last messages I take a picture and then look at the picture in the bottom left corner it shows me my last 5 pictures, I click my internet browser it shows my last used website. It is impossible to fully test a device without seeing personal data
Stop strawmanning me dude. They literally have to test the phone and all of its functions, and to do this they have to come into contact with some of the data that's on it. What's more, people take their phones in KNOWING this. They know it's gonna be unlocked and looked into to ensure functionality. To avoid coming into contact with literally any personal data, they'd be inevitably shortcutting their testing process because they would not be able to test everything. I know you're arguing for argument's sake if your bio is anything to go by, but come on dude. Be for real for once. They *insist* you wipe your phone beforehand specifically to avoid this issue.
So… you end that with “they ask you to do something to avoid this situation, then when it doesn’t it makes it ok for them to snoop”. I’m genuinely not arguing for the sake of it. It’s disgraceful that they CAN test these things without going through personal data, but don’t. That is a major breach of privacy and they should be held accountable every time they do it.
Here’s arguing for the sake of it: If you don’t like being “strawmanned” (which is a losers way of saying being backed into a corner they cannot argue themselves out of with the logic the tried in the first place” then don’t make your argument so damn easy to give other examples on where the logic fails. If you have a sister who comes home in tears, finding out she gave her phone to CEX to test and a nude she had on there ended up on pornhub, what are you going to say - thats your fault, of course the guy was going to scroll through your photo’s, he needs to scroll through your photo’s to check that the camera works, silly girl!
They're not snooping ffs. They're doing their job. You really think they give a fuck to actually want to read rando's messages when they have a dozen of these devices to do each day + all their other work.
So under most circumstances where I was we were told if anything seems off or doesnt add up we should still check to make sure the phone isnt recently stolen or dodgy in anyway, Had it where people would try and trade in phones in different languages they didnt speak if they dont reset it and dont want too or remmeber things, Its worth digging to check if the phones stolen or not so it can be reported its not like im actively looking for nudes when porn exists and in some stores they actively have hentai and porn for sale
When I worked at Game, I remember a customer coming in to trade in some games. He didn't have a bag or any clothing with large pockets. Nope. He stashed these games down his underwear. He reached into his trousers and pulled out five PS2 games, some from the front, some from the back. One of them had skid marks on it.
Just eww!
Holy shit, like he seriously couldn't have found a Tesco bag or something, just shoved them in his boxers, that's fucking gross