I've been having a very difficult time getting responses from T-Mobile support, and I was hoping that by posting this here someone might be able to help.
I'm a US journalist who is currently working outside of the country, and I bought an iPhone 5s, at the full retail price, from T-Mobile while I was stateside in early November. Since even before I finished paying for the phone, I was given a lot of incorrect and misleading information from T-Mobile and its representatives. I was clear about my intentions to take the phone out of the US, and to unlock it when I could. Still, the store reps gave me the wrong info, the wrong rates, and set up my phone incorrectly to use outside of the US.
I'll cut to the chase: I've had 15 different support discussions since then, and I have since met all of T-Mobile's requirements to have the phone unlocked. I've been pretty patient. But the unlock requests are still being denied. Each time I speak to a support representative, they seem to be grasping at straws for a reason the request was denied -- and in many cases, they just ask me to put more money onto my pay-as-you-go plan and to do something else. It's become maddening. I have had supervisors escalate my case to upper management and the unlock team four times now, and was promised a call back within 24 to 72 hours. Each time they have failed to get back to me. Nothing. And I'm given no report number or anything each time -- only "my word" from whatever support rep is talking at the time that the call will happen.
During my most recent support discussion, last weekend, a supervisor informed me that because my phone usage is occurring outside of the US that T-Moble has no way of proving that I have been making calls from that phone, with that particular IMEI. Apparently, though, they can see that I am using the phone on international roaming and that my account balance is being refilled and depleted. Logically, they should be able to see I'm using the phone. Of course, the most disturbing part about this explanation is that it implies there is no way that T-Mobile will unlock a phone if the usage occurs outside of the US -- something that over the course of purchasing the phone and two months' worth of follow-up support calls no one has ever mentioned. Nor is that mentioned anywhere in the terms on T-Mobile's site.
I write about travel and technology for a living, and never have I encountered such misinformation and difficulty. And this from a company that claims to be making the mobile carrier business simple. If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it.