In an effort to increase my privacy, I decided to buy a Pixel phone second hand to use with GrapheneOS. Due to some miscommunications, the phone ended up being carrier locked with T-Mobile. GrapheneOS’s own website advises against buying carrier locked phones in order to avoid the hassle of carrier unlocking it.

I assumed that even if the support staff was unaware about OEM unlocking, I would at least be able to fairly effortlessly get the device carrier unlocked because it was bought second hand. My first call was to the T-Mobile support center, and the representative wanted the phone number of the device in order to unlock it. The device had no phone number, so we instead tried the IMEI. I was told that the IMEI was invalid because it was not the correct number of characters, and was told that there was nothing they could do without physical access to the device. As expected, the representative had never heard of OEM unlocking.

My next stop was at a T-Mobile store, to seek help there. The staff member there was very helpful and, despite not knowing what OEM unlocking was, was very aware of how to handle the situation regardless. He made a call to T-Mobile support (which has a different process if you are a staff member) and explained the situation to them.

Here is where things get interesting: T-Mobile had the ability to carrier unlock the phone, and had enough information to prove the device was mine, but refused to carrier unlock it because it has to be done by the original account holder. They wouldn’t give any information about how to contact the original account holder, which is reasonable.

The in-person representative told me that if I was able to find a phone number linked with the original account holder that they would be able to do more, but after trying for over an hour to find any contact information with the seller, I couldn’t find anything.

The in-person representative decided to try calling support one more time, and even went out of his way to try lying to the support team on my behalf, just to see what could be done.

After hanging up the phone, he told me that T-Mobile gave me 2 options:

1. Return the device entirely and buy a different one
2. Pay for T-Mobile for an entire year AND pay a $100 service fee

That’s like telling someone they have to pay a year of rent before they can even step foot in a house they already paid for, and then pay $100 to get the doors unlocked. I knew it would be a bit of a process to get it carrier unlocked, but I didn’t realize it would take me four hours to be told I had to pay T-Mobile for a year to be able to access a device I paid for.

I even tried using T-Mobile’s own app to unlock the device, but the app is not functional as many reviewers have also noted.

Thankfully the seller accepted free returns, so the story has a happy ending, but any consideration of buying a carrier locked phone before has since evaporated.

It is truly dystopian how we live in a world where companies are allowed to get away with stuff like that, and yet people still give away their money and freedom to these companies.