Is There Anyway To Tell A Grey Import When Buying A Phone?

[knod]

Is there anyway to tell a grey import when buying a phone? I guess price is one way. Is there any other ways?

[Pushit]

No guarantee,

[arkom]

Most phone imported from the US will have the carrier logo like AT&T or Verizon printed on the front.

[MB1]

Most phone imported from the US will have the carrier logo like AT&T or Verizon printed on the front.

No doubt in Thailand they can fake the logo.

TIT. The hub of fake but it's illegal but pay your way and you can sell.

[bino]

I always look for instruction manual / packaging in Thai language. Although it isn't foolproof way,as MBH1 says above that anything can be faked, a grey area import that arrived in someone's suitcase won't have this.

[lomatopo]

I think this is going to vary greatly depending on brand/model.

For major manufacturers, and I'm sort of assuming this is what you are asking about as these are the typically the only phones expensive enough to generate a grey-market, you should be able to discern some details re: country of sale from the bar-code/label on the outside of the box. Once you can examine the warranty service details, typically these are in the box and/or included in the printed materials (user's manual, towards the end, you should be able to determine the subsidiary responsible for warranty repair/service. So if it says to contact Samsung Hungary with an address in Budapest this would be a grey-market import, which might have fallen off the boat between the factory where it was assembled and Hungary, in this case. Obviously you would have to transport the unit to Samsung Hungary for any warranty service or repair, hence the risk. Some suggest that these units are "factory seconds" but units out of spec are tightly controlled and reworked or scrapped, and do not escape into the wild.

[arkom]

Most phone imported from the US will have the carrier logo like AT&T or Verizon printed on the front.

No doubt in Thailand they can fake the logo.

TIT. The hub of fake but it's illegal but pay your way and you can sell.

True, but I doubt anyone actually does that as there really isn't any benefit of buying an import, unless you wanted save a little money of want the phone before it is released here.

Also warranty would not be valid here.

Edited July 1, 2012 by arkom

[wana]

Most phone imported from the US will have the carrier logo like AT&T or Verizon printed on the front.

No doubt in Thailand they can fake the logo.

TIT. The hub of fake but it's illegal but pay your way and you can sell.

True, but I doubt anyone actually does that as there really isn't any benefit of buying an import, unless you wanted save a little money of want the phone before it is released here.

Also warranty would not be valid here.

theres a great benefit to buying an import IMO ,sometimes 30% cheaper

apart from that ,modern phones are pretty reliable ,half the things that

go wrong like

dropped it and cracked screen

spilled a beer over it watching footballet

dropped it my coffee mug at work etc

none of this kind of stuff is covered by warranty anyway

I would take the import and just pray i dont break it prematurely

warranty is only 12 months anyway ,after that youre on you own no matter where it came from

and how much you paid

[oggie911]

most copies of i phones have 2 nokia batteries but from china and only last 1 or 2 hours even nokia copies batteries 2 hour after full charge buy a cheap one in tesco lotus better avoid tuk com