You've heard this story before. I purchased a used MacBook from a pawnshop. The sale was final, and it's stuck with an activation lock to an iCloud account that's not mine. I started the process with Apple to remove the lock, and they denied my request. I believe this is because the receipt I provided was from the pawnshop and not the original one that came with the computer. Before several people comment yOu sToLe iT, I didn't. It was a legitimate purchase. I have accepted that this computer will not get unlocked. But what do I do with it?

You can't clear the Apple ID off the MacBook with some sort of system restore. The parts are serialized, so selling this for just parts seems inefficient. And I don't think there's a refurbisher that accepts locked devices like this. Is there genuinely no way these things can be repurposed?

I found a M1 MacBook Pro on eBay purchased it and now it has been delivered. However upon powering it on it seems that it is iCloud locked, waiting on an activation. I have looked into this but turned up with nothing. I looked at iRemove tools to bypass it but it only works on the Intel MacBooks. I also have seen a usb configurator for like $200 that bypasses the lock if you open up the MacBook and take out the chip and insert it into the configurator. Though I feel like at that point it’s just not worth it. Is there maybe like a third party service where I can send it in and they unlock it for you?