Using a 3rd party to unlock an iPhone
 

Should be a simple question that someone here will hopefully be able to answer.

I have a Sprint carrier-locked iPhone 6s. I purchased the phone from Swappa about a year ago and have been using it on Sprint with no issues. However, we have left Sprint and ported our numbers to Project Fi - all except this number, because the phone is locked.

My Sprint account has never been past due. The phone is paid for and was never financed to begin with. I've used it for a year on the Sprint network and a prior owner of the phone probably did so as well. Swappa guarantees it's a clean ESN and it obviously was for me to activate it a year ago. Yet Sprint refuses to unlock the phone. My two choices are (a) buy an unlocked phone and sell this one on Swappa or (b) - maybe - get a third party to unlock the phone. I see ads for this on the Internet but don't know if they're legit.

Thoughts? Is there any way to get this done?

I've learned two lessons here: (1) I'm never buying another carrier-locked phone again. The CTIA agreement that carriers would provide unlocks when a customer had met basic conditions obviously does not have any real teeth and (2) I'm never going back to Sprint again unless T-Mobile can successfully kill them off for good. (Then I'd still consider T-Mobile, although they still have some hurdles to get over before they can swallow Sprint.)

It is a good time to sell 6s because Tmobile's x'mas promotion is free XR (or $750 phone credit) with a 6s/7/8/X trade in, so it drives the price of the 6s up.

Ha! That's good to know. The phone's buyer won't care how awful Sprint is. :p

not strictly an iphone, but ive used these anonymous unlocking services multiple times and theyve all worked. pay with paypal, while sending in my IMEI.... in 5 minutes or so receive the unlock code and bam.

very little monetary risk (20 bucks or fewer)... no security or other risks.

dont know if its chinese or russian farms with cracked algorithm or rogue employees with IMEI hash or what, but its worked.

Where iPhones are concerned it's rogue employees, I went down the rabbit hole when I paid someone on eBay to unlock a Bell Canada iPhone. Somebody with credentials has to submit an unlock ticket to Apple.

The conventional code unlock is usually brute force reverse engineering.

The problem with unknown unlocking an Apple phone is that it voids their warrenty

It's an iPhone 6. I assume it has no warranty at this point.

I actually tried such a service before on a used iPhone and ended up having to file a chargeback because they never followed through. Ended up getting rid of the phone and buying a new one at the Apple Store a year or two earlier than I wanted. It's a large part of why I only buy unlocked phones now.

Anyway, I'd definitely read up on the various services before giving them money.

I haven't used one of these services in a few years (I've just been buying unlocked phones), but did three or four times in the past and never had any issues. It was clear they were relying on either Apple or, much more likely, telco insiders to do the requests as the unlocks worked in exactly the same way as official ones.

Worst case, do a chargeback if it doesn't work.