The unexpected restarts and factory reset experienced by Collery may have been evidence that Verizon was using its MDM system to send instructions to a large number of devices. “When you have a fleet of demo phones like this and you have MDM, you’re just sending instructions to all the phones,” Quintin said.

If Verizon has a policy to wipe demo phones periodically, it might simply have been “time for that policy to kick in and that’s why his phone got wiped,” Quintin said.

Verizon admitted mistake in letter to FCC

Collery’s data was gone from the phone, and it turned out that the backups to his Google and Samsung accounts weren’t as up to date as he thought they were. Collery, who works in healthcare, said in a phone interview, “I lost everything. Contacts, messages, videos, documents, pictures, everything from patient information to the last video I have with my grandmother before she died. Everything within a couple of years’ span for some reason is gone from both my backups, and everything that was on that phone originally was completely wiped.”

After being dissatisfied with the response from Verizon support, Collery made the Reddit post and later reached out to Ars. He shared documents with us, including a letter Verizon provided to the Federal Communications Commission after he complained to the FCC.

Verizon’s letter to the FCC, dated April 2, said Collery was mistakenly sent a store demonstration unit instead of a phone suitable for a paying customer.

“We acknowledge the seriousness of the error that led to Mr. Collery receiving a device subsequently identified as a ‘demo phone,’ which was found to have a Mobile Device Management (MDM) registration linked to Verizon. This procedural lapse has been formally submitted for internal investigation,” Verizon’s executive relations department told the FCC.