Within a few days, if an iPhone has been reported by its owner as missing or Stolen to Apple, it cannot be repaired at Apple Retail Stores or Apple Authorized Repair Services. Great news.
But great news that should have been published a long time ago. If Apple has a database with the reference of each iPhone that has been reported stolen, it is hard to understand why it has waited so many years to apply this new rule to its repairers.
Those of Cupertino have decided to try to mitigate the traffic of stolen iPhones. And it's going to do it by introducing a pretty big change to the way technicians handle repairing the iPhones they receive for repair. Before doing so, they will check the database Apple if said terminal has been reported lost or stolen.
According to an internal document that Apple has distributed among its workers, the company will stop repairing iPhones that have been reported missing. This means that, shortly, the technicians of the shops Apple Store and authorized services will deny a repair to any customer if the device has been reported missing.
This is a basic extension of the rule Apple already has in place that limits the overall repair options for technicians if an iPhone customer can't turn off Find on their phone.
The device must be listed as missing in the official Device Registry GSMA, which is a global network that aims to help wireless manufacturers and operators detect stolen handsets. If the Apple technician verifies that the device appears in the system as lost through its database, must deny repair to the person requesting it.
