This sounds terrible, but there are some lingering issues which don't sit right:
If this person has their original invoice/receipt. Then it's trivial to show that this is not an item which requires that duties be paid. He's clearly not buying it twice. Agreeing to pay duties for something that was bought inside of the country, or already delivered to the country at the time of sale raises a red flag on this story. (Like why aren't they claiming the duties back now?)
The second issue is that Apple are pretty good about unlocking devices when the owner has their purchase paperwork (invoice/receipt) because this contains the serial number and the owners name. If that doesn't work for some reason (e.g. Apple have information that the device was sold or legitimately owned by someone else), then the owner can turn to further resources to prove ownership, including the documentation that shows that it was a missing item, a police report, an insurance claim, a notarised witness statement and so on. It's not as simple as "computer says no".
Altogether there seems to be more to this story. Has the other person meddled with the laptop? The author seems to have some suspicions that the other user attempted to make good with it - that seems like the source of his woes.
> The author seems to have some suspicions that the other user attempted to make good with it
This seems like something that should be extremely easy for Apple to see. If the data aligns completely with thr story OP tells, why won’t they help him?
If this person has their original invoice/receipt. Then it's trivial to show that this is not an item which requires that duties be paid. He's clearly not buying it twice. Agreeing to pay duties for something that was bought inside of the country, or already delivered to the country at the time of sale raises a red flag on this story. (Like why aren't they claiming the duties back now?)
The second issue is that Apple are pretty good about unlocking devices when the owner has their purchase paperwork (invoice/receipt) because this contains the serial number and the owners name. If that doesn't work for some reason (e.g. Apple have information that the device was sold or legitimately owned by someone else), then the owner can turn to further resources to prove ownership, including the documentation that shows that it was a missing item, a police report, an insurance claim, a notarised witness statement and so on. It's not as simple as "computer says no".
Altogether there seems to be more to this story. Has the other person meddled with the laptop? The author seems to have some suspicions that the other user attempted to make good with it - that seems like the source of his woes.