People are selling second hand iPhone handsets preloaded with TikTok on eBay for extortionate amounts of money, and a number of US buyers appear to have taken them up on the offer.
With TikTok remaining absent from the US App Store and Google Play Store despite Donald Trump’s 75-day reprieve, some internet entrepreneurs have spotted the chance to make a quick buck.
Wired has spotted that a number of eBay sellers – more than 22,000 at the time of writing – are capitalising on the recent US TikTok blackout by selling second hand phones that already have the app preloaded. There are listings on there with Buy It Now prices of up to $50,000.
We’ve done a little delving via a VPN and eBay’s Sold filter, and at the time of writing it seems that some 195 people have accepted these deals. Among the listings to have ended recently, one there’s an iPhone 15 Pro Max that ‘sold’ for $11,0000, and even an iPhone 16 Plus that closed out at $27,000 (plus delivery costs, naturally).
Of course, we should take such headline figures with a generous pinch of salt. As always with eBay, an ended listing doesn’t mean that the buyer has actually stumped up the cash, while some of the more extreme listings have an undisclosed ‘Best offer accepted’ note attached to them. Many are likely to be re-listed.
Picking out some of the more ‘reasonably priced’ listings at random, there’s an iPhone 12 Pro Max that sold for $120, and an iPhone 13 Pro Max that sold for $375.
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The point remains, however, that many Americans are clearly feeling the absence of the snappy video clip app from their lives, and are willing to go to fairly drastic lengths to fill the void.
Even with the more realistic listings on eBay, this is quite the extreme purchase we’re talking about. After all, you’re talking about buying a phone that hasn’t been restored to factory settings, with the seller simply having signed out of their iCloud or Google account. This poses all manner of potential account-syncing and security issues.
An already ridiculous situation will likely look even more so if and when the Trump administration finds a permanent solution for the video service, and the app is made available to US customers once again.
