topic Re: Phone locked to EE sim card in Android Devices

Phone locked to EE sim card

SnAkEs1210 — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 21:02:55 GMT

24 months had passed and my phone was finally paid for. I wasn't ready to upgrade and just wanted to lower my phone bill. In the end I decided to move to a different network but my new sim card wouldn't work in my phone.

EE, rather sneakily lock their phones so that they only accept EE sim cards and you then have to contact them to obtain an unlock code.

Unfortunately, EE advisors are not trained in unlocking phones and provided me with the wrong information. This ultimately ended with my phone being hard locked.

My advice would be not to blindly follow what EE advisors say.

I have a Sony phone and despite me giving the EE advisor the IMEI number and them confirming my phone was a Sony xperia one, they still proceeded to give me instructions for unlocking a Samsung phone. They seemed to think that I had to split the code in two and then enter the second half of the code, followed by the first half.

The other mistake the advisor made was to ask me repeatedly to enter the code in this format and they should have been aware that there is a limited number of times that the code can be entered. I was also told to remove the sim, reboot the phone and then type #7465625*638*# in to the keypad on my phone. This did absolutely nothing as this code would only be used to access the sim lock settings on a Samsung phone.

Now I can't use my phone at all and the only option is to send it to Sony for repair. This also means that my phone will be wiped of all its data.

Overall, I'm not impressed at all but hopefully this post might prevent others from having their phones disabled due to the incompetence of the EE advisors.

Re: Phone locked to EE sim card

Jon_K — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 07:58:22 GMT

Hi @SnAkEs1210.

Welcome to the community.

I'm sorry to hear this has happened.

Have you managed to get in contact with Sony?

Our Customer Care team should of been able to provide an unlock code.

Jon

Re: Phone locked to EE sim card

SnAkEs1210 — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 11:12:02 GMT

Hi Jon,

Yes I was given a 16 digit code along with these instructions

You are required to break down the
code into two parts:
Example if the you have
1735974626497251 then it can be
broken as MCK( the last 8 digits) and
the unlocking code( the first 8 digit
code):
The format would be: MCK code to be
entered, Unlocking code to be
entered
YOU need to use that MCK first and
then hit okay, On the next step you
will be asked to enter the code to
unblock the phone and here you need
to use the 17359746 as the unlocking
code

Unfortunately those instructions are for a Samsung phone and as a result my phone is now hard locked and cannot be used.

Yes I did speak to Sony, they told me that I needed to speak to EE and I went around in circles for nearly a week as nobody seemed to want to help me and kept passing me on to a different advisor. EE Handset Unlocking Team sent me 7 identical emails, with the same 16 digit code. Obviously this 16 digit code is useless as no matter how many times I entered it, the pop up message said unsuccessful.

I did eventually talk to an EE advisor that seemed to have some knowledge and after explaining to him that I put the code in in two parts, he straight away told me that I shouldn't have done it like that for a Sony phone. He then guided me to check something else and we could confirm the phone had been hard locked and now needs to be sent for repair.

Sony have at least accepted that the phone needs repairing but they have stated that there might be a charge, will more than likely take 14 days to do and that my phone will be completely wiped of all my data.