Unlock deceased's phone from network?

Hoploz

A relative died and we want to give his phone to my son as his has gone wrong.

We tried to get it unlocked from 3 to use son's existing giffgaff sim. Paid a general phone store to unlock it. Got call from them to say it was done but the giffgaff sim says it isnt 'supported' when we try it in phone.

Husband went into 3 store to sort it but ended up with a new 3 contract instead of unlocking phone.

We do not get 3 reception in house so the new sim contract is completely useless. We suffer very poor wifi so we struggle to get anything from the phone at home - no phone signal, no 3G and patchy wifi.

Two questions
1) can we cancel the sim contract bought in store - is there still a cooling off period when bought this way?

2) How do we get phone unlocked from 3 to use a supplier we can get a signal with?

The original phone contract was paid by us from our company bank account as the relative was employed by us. But is in the deceased persons name so 3 say they cannot discuss the account with us at all.

Please help

Jon_01

1, not as rule, there's no cooling for for anything bought in store.

2, all networks have (or should have) a dept for dealing with this. It should just be a matter for find out which address and dept. They then send in the acc details and an original death certificate and they can either transfers ownership or cancel the contract.

Frozen_up_north

Three unlock all their phones for free, you wasted your time and money going to a back street phone unlocker.

The CEOs office at Three will sort your issue, email david.dyson@three.co.uk and ask for assistance with getting the phone unlocked.

Hope the back street unlocker hasn't fouled the phone up.

DCFC79

Jon_01 wrote: »

1, not as rule, there's no cooling for for anything bought in store.

2, all networks have (or should have) a dept for dealing with this. It should just be a matter for find out which address and dept. They then send in the acc details and an original death certificate and they can either transfers ownership or cancel the contract.

Good advice here OP.

I don't understand how your husband ended up walking out with a new contract.

pmduk

Unlocking the phone should be easier than getting out of the contract. The Giffgaff unlockopaedia should steer you in the right direction for your phone. However you will be subject to the network's policy on unlocking phones, the death certificate bears no relevance as the individual wasn't party to the contract.

Buzby

Nobody has pointed out that 3UK stopped locking their handsets around 5 years ago. It is either a very old handset, but more likely that the phone uses a 5v SIM, when all the new phones use 3v SIMs.

Since money was supposedly paid to someone to unlock it, so go back there with the SIM to demand a refund if they don't fix it.

Hoploz

Thanks all for your input.

We have the death certificate so will go back to 3 shop to see if this helps.

Interesting about the sim types - how would we know if it's the old type?

Yes I was annoyed about the new contract and just really want to get out of it as it is virtually useless for the way we want to use it, and even if we were to get one of their signal boosters to use wifi for us this wouldn't work either.

He took out the new contract as we were really keen to get it all sorted fast as my son is leaving school and all his friends are going to different places so he really is desperate to get a number finalised to give out in the next few days before they break up! He's really so upset about it, we thought it'd be so easy just swapping his sim to other phone but it's been 3 weeks since we originally tried to unlock it. I had no idea how the process works - Stupid as it sounds I actually thought they had to open the phone up and do something to it so didn't even consider we could do it ourselves

eDicky

Hoploz wrote: »

Interesting about the sim types - how would we know if it's the old type?

Specify the handset model. Does the new contract SIM work with it?

sdduk

OP you could aways try this.

https://www.three.co.uk/Support/Device_Unlock

Hoploz

We have gone through the online unlock procedure and it has not worked. That's why we are going back to the shop.

pmduk

is it an iphone? they can be !!!!!!s to unlock