PSA: Don’t buy a $4,400 gray market Samsung TriFold on eBay

I had to buy Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold from eBay for $4,399 and I’m pretty sure that’s because Samsung doesn’t want anyone to actually have this phone. I’m also afraid to turn it on.

Not that turning it on does much good. Whenever I tap “start” to set it up, a prompt to supply a “USIM” pops up and refuses to let me progress without one. I do not trust this phone enough to put a SIM card in it. The phone continues to want a SIM. We are at an impasse.

In theory, Samsung’s ambitious TriFold has been on sale in the US since January 30th (retail price: $2,899), but it has been damn near impossible to get one. For any other phone launch we would typically use a review unit on loan from the manufacturer; Samsung PR did not provide a TriFold review unit to The Verge. We resigned to buying our own, but the phone was out of stock within minutes of going on sale the first time.

Weeks went by — weeks in which I asked Samsung’s PR in vain if they were absolutely sure they didn’t have one I could borrow — and the TriFold remained stubbornly out of stock. I called retail stores; they didn’t have any to sell me. The phone went back in stock briefly in February, but once again, it sold out before we could get all of the corporate credit card details punched in. Truly, how many of these nearly $3,000 phones is Samsung selling in a matter of minutes? I strongly suspect not very many, and the scarcity effect is a feature of offering just a handful of phones at a time, not a bug.

In desperation, we turned to eBay. Sifting through the sellers without ratings, who somehow wanted to turn around and sell a very expensive phone they just bought for very little profit, we landed on Moderntek. The seller had lots of positive ratings and seemingly a bunch of TriFolds to sell for a cool $4,399 each. (We’re not recommending you buy it here, let alone at all.) It’s worth noting that while the TriFold has been on sale longer in other parts of the world, they’re not, like, abundant anywhere else right now. It’s also listed as out of stock on Samsung’s Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese websites.

We were promised the phone would arrive in early March; early March came and we discovered it hadn’t even shipped yet. The seller responded quickly to our questions with a confusing message about logistics issues and orders being overlooked. Suddenly, it was slated to arrive within a couple of days — shipping from Scottsdale, Arizona, not Hong Kong, as the original tracking number indicated.

The package arrived on Monday without any fanfare — just a retail box inside a FedEx bubble mailer. Covering the seam on one side of the box were two seals — one in Chinese and a white one on top in English. I’d never seen this kind of label on a phone shipped by the manufacturer. It read: “DO NOT ACCEPT IF SEAL IS BROKEN.” Underneath the sticker, the paper of the box was bubbling. Big “my anti-tamper seal has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my anti-tamper seal” energy.

I cut both seals and opened the box. There it was: the TriFold I’d been so eager to get my hands on. The protective film on the inner screen peeled away easily, and I could see why: bits of hair and crumbs lined the adhesive. I’m pretty sure Samsung doesn’t send phones from the factory like that.

There was another unpleasant surprise waiting for me: When I powered the phone on, it was already set up. On top of that, an app I didn’t recognize prompted a pop-up almost immediately, asking for a long list of sketchy permissions. I hit deny and factory reset the phone. The phone obliged, but now insists that I need a SIM to continue with setup. I can’t find a way to bypass this requirement, and I’ve set up loads of Android phones without a physical SIM. I don’t even have one at the moment anyway (thanks a bunch, eSIM).

So that’s where I am. Do I have a $4,400 phone riddled with malware? My interactions with the seller and some quick Googling suggest it’s not some kind of sophisticated phishing scheme — more likely it’s just some regular ol’ eBay bait-and-switch shenanigans, possibly to hook us for a pricey restocking fee. I’ve asked Samsung to confirm some details about the model I was shipped; I haven’t gotten any answers from them.

This whole cursed endeavor has led me to a single conclusion: Samsung doesn’t actually want to sell TriFolds. If it did, then the company would simply make more of them and sell them. No, Samsung wants us to want a TriFold. The TriFold is aspirational. It makes the $2,000 Z Fold 7 with a single hinge look like a hell of a deal. That is its job; if this phone’s job was to actually exist, then it would. If this were some paradigm-shifting technological achievement, it would be in the hands of every tech reviewer in the country — not a handful of mostly influencers. In the meantime, I’ve got a very expensive paperweight on my desk and a “Money Back Guarantee” request to file with eBay.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge