Second Hand Meraki Owner?

[CarrotJuice]

So I am actually a very nerdy restaurant operator with a novice IT hobby. I recently cancelled a wifi service that was being provided in my stores.  I'd had the service long enough that when I called to cancel, they told me I could keep the equipment (half dozen meraki mr33-hw access points).  I thought: Cool! I'm gonna take these home, factory reset them, and build the most amazingly overkill home wifi network ever all the while teaching myself about enterprise level networking!"  But alas, now that I have them home, it seems they are still tied to the original purchaser despite my best efforts to factory reset and wipe the previous owners from existence.  

I certainly did not expect to be granted free access to Cisco's amazing cloud management software for these second hand devices, but I was a little disappointed to find that I am also prevented from accessing the device locally after a factory reset.  It seems tragic that such a beautiful piece of technology is now essentially bricked that the original owner has given up on it.  Is there no way for me to unlock these devices and explore what they have to offer?

Best Regards,

Carrot.

[Roska]

Thanks for posting. Did you purchase the HW units and the licenses that should be tied to the HW, in MR/wireless lics are probably LIC-ENT-xxx where the last part of a PID is for the duration of license + support. Get the list of serials and contact the seller and ask them to remove them from original Meraki organization. The problem with second hand devices like Meraki is that there is no way for the buyer to check if traded goods are tied to a previous owner or not. You could additionally contact your local Meraki sales reps to explain the situation. Not 100% sure how Meraki EULA handles these types of situations now so I would recommend you to contact both the seller and Meraki directly.

Good luck.

[cmr]

@CarrotJuice have you created a dashboard and tried to add them?  If you are blocked from doing so then the original organization needs to release them to you, if they are unwilling to do this then I would tell them that they have an obligation to collect them from you as they are electrical waste.

If you can add them to a dashboard then you can check that they work, but you will need to buy licenses for them to actually allow them to pass traffic etc.  I wouldn't buy any licenses until you have managed to add them to a dashboard in case they are locked to the original organization they would have been assigned to.

[PhilipDAth]

The original owner has to remove them from their dashboard.  Then you would need to buy some new Meraki licences, and then add them to your own Meraki Dashboard.

[JohnD]

Yeah the key for second-hand Meraki ownership is that the original owner needs to cooperate in unclaiming the devices from their dashboard. It’s similar to how iPhones are activation locked to their original owner too. In general I’ve found that if you’re unable to establish that because the original business went under or original owners are MIA, you’re on your own.

It’s worth mentioning that the hardware warranty is forever tied to the first owner, and if you try to process an RMA, that’s the only address Meraki will be willing to ship to. Other than that, as a home office user with a limited budget, I’ve had generally good luck with saving a lot of money through second-hand, unclaimed Meraki hardware.

[PhilipDAth]

> if you try to process an RMA, that’s the only address Meraki will be willing to ship to. 

It's correct, that the licence and support and tried to the original owner.

I've rarely had Meraki support enforce this.  They normally ask for the shipping address, and just ship replacements.  If you get the odd support person enforcing the letter of the law - close the case and open a new one.