Unlocking second hnd iphone 5 on orange

mnbvcxz

I bid on an iPhone 5 that was meant to be open to all networks. It turns out what the seller meant was it was on orange but I could have it unlocked and then use it on all networks...

On the other hand I had a fairly good price (I have not paid yet). So the question is how hard is it going to be to get unlocked.

The seller says they were the original owner and on orange so I would assume a contract.

It has been suggested that I could just put a payg sim card in and pay £8.99 to orange and they will unlock it as a payg handset?

Does anyone have any experience if this is right? Is it this simple. Whether they will complain its a contract phone not a payg mobile or that I'm not the original owner, or that my account has not been open long enough. Whether I can use an ee sim in a orange phone is also a question...

Thanks for any experiences.

Browntoa

If they are the owner then they can request the code , if they refuse I'd walk away

Futuristic

http://ee.co.uk/help/getting-started/joining-ee/unlocking-your-device

d123

Futuristic wrote: »

http://ee.co.uk/help/getting-started/joining-ee/unlocking-your-device

If you’re not an EE, Orange or T-Mobile customer and have bought a device second hand that’s locked to our network, you can go into an EE store to get it unlocked. Sorry, but these requests can’t be made online.

That's a new addition to the policy.

TadleyBaggie

Browntoa wrote: »

If they are the owner then they can request the code , if they refuse I'd walk away

It's an iPhone, no codes involved.

Futuristic

d123 wrote: »

That's a new addition to the policy.

Indeed but you should be able to get a PAYG sim which with top up would probably cost £10. No idea on EE if they have a requirement on requiring X months of activation before unlocking for PAYG.

AndyPK

On the plus side, I would expect it to work with Orange,T Mobile, EE, Virgin and Vectone.

mnbvcxz

Thankyou for the thoughts though I'm afraid it sounds like you are as confused as I am.

I did read the ee unlocking guide pages and browsed their forums but found it rather confusing and vague as to specifics. It is often implied that if you follow their instructions to go into a store you just get told to get a payg card. But again people a vague on whether this actually worked...

It is even unclear if ee sim cards will work in all orange phones let alone t-mobile ones. (The suggestion is that ee is really the old t-mobile network rather than the orange one).

I did think of asking the seller to apply for the unlock themselves but they presumably would now have their sim attached to a new phone and it could would rather take the process out of my control if anything went wrong.

I suspect I will just have to gamble and ask the seller to give me all their details so if they complain it is second hand I can at least say I know who owned it originally.

Still if anyone has successfully unlocked a second hand contract orange iPhone with a payg card I would be interested to hear.

Thanks

diamonds

Orange had 1 staff member unlocking iphones it was reported, people were waiting unacceptable unlock times.

I know my Blackberry provided by Orange would not take the EE(T-Mobile) sim and EE wanted me to pay to unlock it, that was policy at the time, I just laughed down the phone and told them to cancel the EE sim only contract.


Bet the EE shop staff will be clueless if you go in, and just dumbfounded if you show them the EE webpage stating such unlock instore processing haha.

WellKnownSid

diamonds wrote: »

Orange had 1 staff member unlocking iphones it was reported, people were waiting unacceptable unlock times.

Takes about a week - but if they mess it up and you don't hear from them it's then another week as I discovered.

Despite all the complaints, Vodafone only take around two days - just fill in the form on the website.

d123

diamonds wrote: »

Orange had 1 staff member unlocking iphones it was reported, people were waiting unacceptable unlock times.

It was never as low as that, there was a team at the North Tyneside call centre that processed them. Still fairly low numbers involved, but not as bad as you make out.