At my work, they recently cleared out the lost and found and were going to trash stuff. I ended up with a clean practically new iPad. The previous owner was not contactable for over a year. He left his Apple details on and his passcode was 12345 (I kid you not). I want to unlock it from his Apple account so that I can hard reset it. What can I do here?
*Edit: So, after exploring it a bit more, I found a password list in the Passwords. Literally, the first password I put in was the correct one. Lol. It has been freed.
Right on the first part, but the iPad is likely activation locked. The previous owner will have to remove it from their devices first.
Apple customer service will likely need to be involved.
Yeah I was expecting the repair place to have a contact for that. At least here that’s fairly common.
Apple won’t do shit to help. We have a bunch that are locked with iCloud accounts tied to former employees company emails which we have full control over…but when you try to reset the password they try to send a text to the phone that set them up (which we have no access to). We tried to get help from Apple and they won’t unlock any device that we don’t have proof of purchasing directly from Apple, and since they were bought at random retailers they just tell us to buy more new iPads.
That wasn’t my experience, but it did take a few months to get them to accept the best buy receipt we had.
You really just have to call until you get someone who will help.
Went through this at work and we owned the device and it was a nightmare. They make you wait like 6 weeks for a single email that never came to us and we ended up forgetting about it by the time the 6 weeks was up.
Yup. Our receipt didn’t have the SN on it so they told us to write it on the receipt and scan/send. Of course, they rejected it a dozen times.
Apple’s CS is designed to make you just give up. But, unluckily for them, I have infinite patience. Fun fact, Microsoft’s support line stops playing music after 3 hours of waiting.
Ah, that is probably what is happening on my daughters old iPad. I couldn’t figure out how to wipe it and because she didn’t use it for over a year and she forgot the passport. I’ll try to remove it from her account. Or it probably is on her moms account or something.
Yeah if you can provide apple with ownership information they can get you back into it.
The original box with the receipt helps.