Find out it’s stolen now.
Not after you’ve paid.
The customer is at the counter, the phone looks clean, and the only thing standing between you and a dead handset is fifteen digits nobody checked. 8 Star runs blacklist, carrier lock and lost-or-stolen status straight from the buyback screen, in seconds, before any cash moves.
Seconds, not phone callsNo second appResult saved to the record
Run one. See what your counter would see.
Three handsets a shop sees every week. Pick one and watch the check come back — clean, stolen, or the awkward middle case that’s perfectly legal and still worth seventy dollars less than the customer thinks.
Sample handsets
A demo with fixed samples — real lookups run against live carrier and blacklist data from inside the buyback screen.
IMEI check
iPhone 13 · 128GB
IMEI
One missed handset costs more than a year of software. A blacklisted phone isn’t thin margin — it’s the entire purchase price, gone, plus the conversation with whoever comes looking for it.
In the buyback screen, not in another tab.
A check that lives somewhere else is a check that gets skipped on a busy Saturday. This one sits in the flow your counter is already in: it runs as part of quoting the trade, and the offer waits on the answer.
Reported lost or stolen
The unit is on a carrier blacklist. It can't be activated, it can't be resold, and paying for it is a total loss.
Locked to a network
Perfectly legitimate and still worth less. Resale drops until it's unlocked, so the offer has to drop with it.
Still on a payment plan
A device mid-contract can be remotely barred later. The customer gets paid, and you inherit the problem months on.
IMEI doesn't match the handset
A swapped logic board or a relabelled unit. If the number and the phone disagree, that's the whole conversation.
It’s part of taking the trade.The check runs while you’re pricing the handset, so a flagged unit never reaches the point where money changes hands.
See buyback →The answer stays attached to the purchase.
Every check is saved against the record with its result and timestamp, so months later — when someone asks why you bought a handset that turned out to be trouble — the answer isn't a memory. It's on the transaction.
For your staff
Nobody has to remember whether they checked. If the record has no result on it, the trade didn't go through.
For you
Spot the employee waving units through, before it becomes a pattern you find out about from a police report.
For the awkward conversation
A dated result showing the handset was clean when you bought it is the difference between a mistake and a liability.
Fifteen digits, and you know where you stand.
- 01
Pull the IMEI
Type it, scan the box, or dial *#06# on the handset. It lands in the buyback screen you're already working in.
- 02
Run the check
Blacklist, carrier lock and lost-or-stolen status come back together, in seconds — one lookup, not three phone calls.
- 03
Price on the answer
Clean unit, offer stands. Locked, the offer drops to match the resale. Flagged, the trade stops there.
- 04
Keep the receipt
The result is saved to the record with a timestamp, so there's proof you looked long after everyone's forgotten.
The cheapest check you'll run all year.
IMEI checks are built into 8 Star OS, inside the buyback screen your counter already uses. Start free and stop paying cash for handsets that can't be sold.