Apple Nightmare!

Me and my wife bought an Apple IPhone 4 each (second hand) before we came to Taiwan in the hope that we would be able to use a Taiwanese carrier's sim card as long as it is unlocked through the UK carrier it is locked to. For this privilege I paid £20.00 to Vodafone and sure enough within a day or two, my phone was unlocked and I could use it with my Orange sim card. My wife's phone was already unlocked because it could be used on Orange, Three and Vodafone (or so we assumed).

Anyway, after we arrived in Taiwan we both bought a contract for a Taiwanese carrier called WeiBou which offered us quite a nice deal, albeit a bit more expensive than in England. When we put the sim cards into our phones mine worked instantly, but Scully's IPhone (my wife) said we had to connect to ITunes (which is the normal procedure when changing carrier).

When we got home, I connected her mobile to ITunes and was prompted by the 'rather lovely' error in the image below. Which I promptly laughed at and big-headedly thought to myself that I would be able to find a solution on the internet. 

I spent hours and hours trawling the internet for a solution and calling Apple, Orange and Three, trying to find out who the official carrier was for the phone. The problem being that when you put a new sim card in, the phone automatically updates Apple's carrier information for the IMEI, making them think it is locked to a specific network. 

After much arguing with Apple who claimed the phone belonged to Three and Three who claimed they did not have the IMEI in their database, I decided to contact the original owner who said he had purchased the phone from the Apple store on an Orange plan, but had since had the phone replaced due to a problem with the screen. This meant the IMEI number had been changed and not updated in Orange's IMEI database so they did not know the new IMEI is linked to the old one. Apple told me the original IMEI is unlocked, but only for Europe, which explains why all the UK sims were working, but not the Taiwanese one. 

I finally got the IMEI for the old mobile and then contacted Orange again who were able to find the old IMEI in their database and link it to the new one. They confirmed that the IPhone is unlocked, but only in EMEA (Europe). They then offered an international unlock for the old IMEI at a price of £20.00, which must be paid and authorised by the original owner and would automatically unlock the new IMEI too.

Luckily, the original owner seems like a really nice guy and is willing to help me to sort the problem out with a phone call to Orange to authorise the unlock for me. I am waiting to call him back now and hopefully this will be sorted out once and for all and Scully can start making calls with what is currently an expensive paperweight/IPod, along with a reimbursement through PayPal!

Don't you just love the way mobile phones are locked to networks?? And Apple of course...