So i just went to look at a phone i found on gumtree and when i got there the guy said he actually bought it off gumtree too, about a month ago but thing is he said the guy he got it off was on contract, so if at any point he didnt make a payment the phone would be blocked and useless.

The thing that confused me was the ad clearly says UNLOCKED, now correct me if im wrong but if the phone is unlocked then it cant be on contract can it? otherwise it would be locked to that network wouldnt it?

Otherwise if you go to a high street shop and buy one second hand, whos to say that wont be an ex contract phone that gets blocked?

Have i got that all wrong or is it true

It doesnt usually get blocked if the payments are not kept up.
It will get blocked if the owner has taken out insurance and then claims it has been lost or stolen.
Doesnt make any difference if its locked or unlocked.

The original owner could have simply requested it to be unlocked by his provider ?

Thanks thats the main thing i wanted to know.

When i got to this persons house it was a young kid about 14-15 that answered the door and when i got there he said actually they didnt want to sell it really but seeing as i was there i could have it, then he went on to tell me the above about the phone being a contract phone and that if the original owner didnt make a payment it could get blocked, now im just wondering was he trying to put me off buying it on purpose because they changed their minds about selling it? it all makes sense now

It makes even more sense just to walk away given the circumstances you relate.

I did

How much was it ,which model ?

The reason I asked was I had something similar when I purchased a replacement IP4S for my son but I only paid £80 for so it was worth the punt,his old one had a cracked screen AND it had the WIFI Greyed out after updating to 7.1 but I got £100 for his broken one

Its all been ok for the last 6 weeks or so

Another thing to worry about these days is to make sure the owner removes the device from his icloud account.Otherwise you cant use it with itunes to load stuff on it.Even worse if you update it,it wont give access to the device unless you have the icloud password.