What you need to know
- Apple's "Find My" feature is causing issues for refurbishers and third-party retailers.
- The feature, if turned on for a pair of traded-in headphones, prevents a company from reselling them.
- One refurbisher has had to stockpile over 30,000 AirPods because of the issue.
If you recently traded in a pair of AirPods and forgot to disable the "Find My" feature for them, you may have unintentionally contributed to a growing problem.
As reported by Insider (via 9to5Mac, Apple's "Find My" feature for AirPods is causing havoc for refurbishers and third-party retailers who have taken used AirPods with the intention of reselling them. According to the report, one refurbisher said that the issue has caused the company to "stockpile more than 30,000 affected AirPods over the course of just a few weeks."
Users who purchase a pair of AirPods still tied to another user's Apple ID, which is enabled by the "Find My" feature, will receive the following message:
The earbuds of your AirPods are linked to a different Apple ID, possibly because one of the earbuds is mixed up with someone else's AirPods. Learn how to solve this issue by going to the article online.
One company said that eight in ten AirPods they service have the issue. Another has stopped refurbishing and selling AirPods entirely.
goTRG, the aforementioned company that handles returns for Walmart and other retailers, says that this issue affects "about eight in 10 AirPods that come through the company's six facilities." Another company that sells refurbished AirPods on sites like Amazon, R2Cell, was forced to stop selling refurbished AirPods altogether because of the problem.R2Cell, which sells refurbished electronics on Amazon, eBay, and other sites, stopped refurbishing and selling AirPods entirely after it encountered the issue in December, according to CEO Sunny Mohammad. AirPods were already difficult to refurbish, he said, because they have many small and easily-damaged parts.
Both companies said that they have reached out to Apple but have not heard back with a solution yet. While we wait to hear of a solution, please remember to remove your AirPods from "Find My" before you part with them.
Bottom line: With better battery life, a completely new design, new features like Spatial Audio, and an IPX4 rating, the AirPods 3 are better than ever before. Plus, they sound better than the previous models and other than ANC, have pretty much all the same features as the AirPods Pro. These are fantastic AirPods for anyone looking to upgrade or buy their first pair.
