Wildberries forces IMEI checks to stop customers swapping iPhones for bricks
Welcome to the wild west of Russian e-commerce, where buying a luxury smartphone is basically Russian roulette with cardboard boxes. The country’s biggest marketplace is finally trying to stop its legendary shipping-point swap scams.
Starting July 1, pickup point workers at Wildberries will have to manually verify the 15-digit IMEI code for any Apple or Samsung device costing over 40,000 rubles.
This desperate measure comes as the platform battles an absolute epidemic of buyers and gig-workers swapping authentic high-end smartphones with cheap replicas or literal blocks of clay during the unboxing process. Buyers will now be allowed to demand a full IMEI check on the spot, even on unactivated devices, and walk away immediately if the numbers do not match what was ordered.
The check also becomes completely mandatory for anyone trying to return a phone.
Meanwhile, the Russian government is taking the surveillance state to the next level by building a centralized national IMEI database. The Ministry of Digital Development is burning 3 billion rubles over six years to create a master list of authorized and banned mobile devices across all cellular operators.
It is truly beautiful to watch a system spend billions of rubles to build a high-tech digital iron curtain, while the country's largest online store is still struggling to make sure its workers do not steal iPhones out of the cardboard boxes. The dream of a fully tracked, secure digital utopia seems to always stumble over a piece of clay wrapped in bubble wrap.
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