frobozzelectric

i want to use my s7 while travelling but smart gold (.ph) locked it to their network and is charging too much for roaming (US$11 / day).

anybody else unlocked their phone using online unlock services? which one would you recommend?

JY1024

Moving to the Travel Technology forum. Thanks. /JY1024, TravelBuzz co-moderator

msp3

None of them. Because if they're not scams, it's scumbags on fleabay selling access to bribed carrier employees who make illicit unlock requests to Apple or via the carrier's unlocking app (i.e. T-Mobile)

cgtechuk

For an S7 this is not true, Apple yes only way is via apple but the others are good, I use trustpilot to work out one that is reliable and used one to unlock both my Note 3 and 4, Average cost is about £20 GBP i believe

Need

Sometime there is no other ways to unlock a phone. We have a Sim-Free iPhone 7 bought from Best Buy. It's locked to the first carrier sim you insert into it. At the time not many people know this would happen including the people at Best Buy. You could search "best buy sim-free iphone" and you will find lots of people complaining about it. It is purchased with full price but locked to T-mobile. T-mobile won't unlock it because it was not purchased directly from them and they don't have the IMEI number on their inventory system. Apple won't unlock it because it was locked to T-mobile and they need T-mobile to tell them it is okay to unlock. Best Buy can't unlock it because, well they are not a carrier and they don't unlock phones. Everyone agrees that it was purchased full price paid as a Sim-Free phone but now it is locked to T-mobile and no legitimated place could unlock it.

So if the "scambags" could unlock it, more power to them. Personally, I think carriers who locked you phone when your phone is paid off are the scambags. That's one of the reasons I wanted to switch to Verizon. Verizon does not lock your phone even if it not paid off. As I understand, any LTE phones on Verizon came unlocked as you bought it even on EDGE payment plan.

msp3

That specific example gave me a chuckle. Every time Best Buy, Target, etc have some sort of crazy sale the Slickdeals reseller scum set all come out of the woodwork and buy as many phones as they can then proceed to cancel the lines next day screwing over the sales reps and Best Buy's numbers, which in the long run kills all the cell phone deals for everyone.

Frankly people who do this deserve exactly what they get (plus the well-deserved SSN bans from Best Buy's cell phone sales system and from the carrier itself). In your specific situation, there have been examples on Apple unlocking after T-Mobile and the carrier the iPhone is supposed to be registered to corroborating your story, but you'll have to find reps who give a .... and speak English for that which is a tall order in itself...

Loren Pechtel

Then Best Buy should take it back as it was not what they sold it as.

Loren Pechtel

They should quit offering exploitable deals then.

msp3

It's exactly what it was sold as. It was intended for use with the original carrier, and any legit customer of that carrier who inserts the carrier's SIM would have no issue. It's only people trying to scam the system and resellers that run into problems (and rightfully so).

Take a wild guess why there are no T-Mobile phone deals at Best Buy, Target, etc. If their customers aren't happy with the ...... T-Mobile store corp store-only deals they should switch to a better carrier that subsidizes phones for their customers.

WIRunner

Last device that I had unlocked was a Motorola V551, the rest of them I just got the code directly from the carrier.

Alternatively, if your carrier won't unlock it, just pick up a cheap dual sim device on Amazon (or equivalent).

Loren Pechtel

Carrier locks are for when the carrier subsidizes the phone. No subsidy should mean no lock.

Need

They won't do it now. The manager said they used to offer to take back in the first few months but not any more. They said the correct method to truly get a SIM free phone was to insert a Verizon sim into the phone when you first bought it.. and it will unlock it for life because Verizon does not lock their phones. Insert any other SIM (Sprint, AT&T, T-mobile) into the Best Buy Sim-Free iPhone 7 will lock it to the first carrier sim inserted. This is pretty crazy. A lot of people found out about it in the first few weeks because they needed it unlock for oversea. We didn't find out until months later but is too late now. Best buy is saying that Sim-Free is not Unlock. The only Unlock iPhone is from Apple Store. But not all the employees of Best Buy know about this... they were telling people it is unlock because you could put any sim into it.. little do they know it will lock the phone to the first US carrier sim.

Abdul Aleem Alexander Bourgeois

a lot of sifting through review sites and one painful mistake using iphone imei which took my money

TGarza

The reseller SIM lock is called US Reseller Flex Policy and applies to all carriers except Verizon which cannot lock post paid phones as a condition of a spectrum purchase for LTE. My iPhone purchased from Best Buy locked to AT&T because of this policy. I submitted an unlock request to AT&T after meeting the unlock requirements. I received an email a few hours later informing me my iPhone was unlocked.

If the phone is purchased at list price from Best Buy, Target, Walmart etc with no carrier subsidy or finance plans, the US Reseller Flex Policy still applies to the first SIM inserted. The phone will lock to the carrier SIM (except Verizon post paid but not Verizon prepaid) inserted including MVNOs. The lock has nothing to do with the canceling lines or trying to stiff the retailers. Best Buy only carries one model of the iphone which are all unlocked until a SIM is inserted.

Inserting a Verizon post paid SIM in the iPhone would prevent the US Reseller Flex Policy from being applied to the iPhone. The store reps know this and will insert the carrier SIM if the iPhone is being financed or subsidized.