Thursday, November 25, 2010

Windows Phone 7 unlocking - NOT!

I am travelling to Russia, and tried to use the services of this company - windowsphoneunlock.com - to unlock my phone. They claim on the web site that it takes "up to 72 hours" to unlock the phone.

After waiting for 3 days, no response, I sent them an email, asking about the status. They responded that "some Windows Phone 7 devices take longer", and they will be clarifying this on their web page. However, they are confident that they will have the code in 24 hours.

Two more days go through, no code in the mail. I send them another query. This time, the response:

"Dear Sergey
Please accept our apologies with the length of time it is taking to acquire your unlock code. This is because it is with AT&T. It seems that they will not be giving out the unlock codes for several months after the phone has been registered, or until June 2011. We have just had your order returned to us as not found, not surprising as we are finding out no-one can get codes for Windows Phone 7 handsets on AT&T. However along with yours and other returns of not found came back one successful code return, which is peculiar. I don't know if this is a one-off or it means with some other techniques it might be possible.

I appreciate it has been a long time to wait, so at this point can you please advise if you want a full refund, or you want us to keep trying other techniques.

Many thanks for your patience,

windowsphoneunlock.com"
 
So, basically,
(1) They claimed that they could unlock Windows 7 phones, but they did not actually check it.
(2) The way they unlock phones is by simply asking for the code from AT&T on your behalf. Or, you can do it yourself and save the money. Of course, in either case AT&T does not supply the unlock code unless you own the phone for 90 days, as any customer service rep will tell you, which is why they couldn't "unlock" mine.
 
So stay away from these "services" and save yourself some time and money.

1 comment:

Brecon said...

Hi Sergey.

I remember the case with your unlock code, and it was at a time when it was uncertain which unlock codes would come back successful. We were doing some, but not others, including yours. We are since unlocking around 90% of Samsung Focus phones on AT&T.

I haven't responded until now but your post is criticising my business and detrimental to my success. It may be a few words to you but I have put a lot of work, time and effort into making this work. I am not a mega company like Microsoft who you work for, I am a man working his nuts off day and night. There are a few things I would like to clear up to you and any of our customers who read this;

We kept in contact you and the emails I sent you shows we were doing everything we could to get the code and explain what was happening. You say we didn't 'check' that we could unlock it. It took that time to find out if we could get it. If we knew straight away we would have either given you the code or refunded you.

Your statement is also wrong that we simply ask AT&T for the codes. We don't sit on the phones all day asking people in America for unlock codes for phones we don't own. That's not how it works and AT&T don't give out that kind of information. Service reps are right that AT&T don't give out codes for 90 days to the individual consumer, but that isn't how it works either, and not why we couldn't unlock yours.

Also people don't lose their money when they use our 'services'. They receive an unlock code, and if their imei does not have the unlock code available we refund them, as we did to you.

We are unlocking Samsung Focus Windows Phones every day successfully, and sometimes, not, depending on the individual imei number. I'm sure this post on your blog has lost us many customers and much business, so you really got your own back.

Can I ask you to take this post down as it has been up long enough?

We do everything we can to ensure we give our customers what we aim to and are sorry it didn't happen when you tried.

Olive branch extended. = )