I highly doubt Apple knowingly is selling stolen goods.
Seems like a process problem for Apple regarding trade ins. Clearly they got a trade in for something, refurbed it, and somewhere along the way it got marked as stolen. I assume Apple should have access to the same database carriers have to confirm whether something is on the IMEI blacklist.
Optimistically speaking, yes that might be the case, but for a company of Apple's size, it should never replace a broken apple watch with a "marked as stolen" apple watch in the first place. According to author, this apple watch was marked as stolen almost 2 years ago, which shows how broken their IMEI blacklist validation is.
With all due respect, Apple’s size is why these things happen. More replacements means a statistically higher chance of defective ones
I think being on support for 3 hours without them doing anything is the bigger issue. You’re entitled to a working replacement, you should be able to get a working replacement without putting in unreasonable effort.
Or it was just an uncommon error and really doesn’t show anything at all. Seems like for all we know, a cosmic ray flipped a bit during the IMEI check, or maybe the initial stolen device report to T-Mobile gave the wrong IMEI and an innocent unit got flagged.
(That said, I’m going through a similar-ish issue right now with a pair of AirPods where I’m 90% sure Amazon, not Apple, is in the wrong, but considering Apple’s size and vast wealth, I’m kinda surprised they’re making me resolve my issue with Amazon rather than just sending me the version of AirPods Amazon was supposed to.)
Seems like a process problem for Apple regarding trade ins. Clearly they got a trade in for something, refurbed it, and somewhere along the way it got marked as stolen. I assume Apple should have access to the same database carriers have to confirm whether something is on the IMEI blacklist.