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Buyer says iPhone not unlocked

T

Trauma1

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 15, 2009
585
2
I sold and shipped my iPhone 3G and the buyer is saying that it is not unlocked. It is giving him an "Invalid SIM" message. He's using T-Mobile. It was 3.0, and I jailbroke and unlocked it (using ultrasn0w) myself. There was no SIM card inserted when I did it, but I was under the impression that it was fine:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/742572/

Before I shipped it out I informed the buyer that I didn't have a T-Mobile SIM card and that he may have to power on/off or reboot it himself, which I have already instructed him to do. I can walk him through the actual unlocking steps and do it again, but is there anything else that he should be doing? Should he call T-Mobile and get the IMEI number switched over? From what I have looked up and been reading, it seems like you just plug in the SIM card and it should work. Can you even, in essence, "reinstall" an unlock?
 
Have him restore unto the official 3.0 firmware, and try the procedure again. I've never had that problem when unlocking my phone mulitple times, but then again I have a 2G.
 
Krafty said:
Have him restore unto the official 3.0 firmware, and try the procedure again. I've never had that problem when unlocking my phone mulitple times, but then again I have a 2G.
Click to expand...

I thought about giving him the instructions guide and telling him to start over, but I don't know if he is able to do that himself. Also, I did technically sell him an unlocked phone. I would hate for him to have paid a premium for something that he has to do again on his own.
 
Trauma1 said:
I sold and shipped my iPhone 3G and the buyer is saying that it is not unlocked. It is giving him an "Invalid SIM" message. He's using T-Mobile. It was 3.0, and I jailbroke and unlocked it (using ultrasn0w) myself. There was no SIM card inserted when I did it, but I was under the impression that it was fine:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/742572/

Before I shipped it out I informed the buyer that I didn't have a T-Mobile SIM card and that he may have to power on/off or reboot it himself, which I have already instructed him to do. I can walk him through the actual unlocking steps and do it again, but is there anything else that he should be doing? Should he call T-Mobile and get the IMEI number switched over? From what I have looked up and been reading, it seems like you just plug in the SIM card and it should work. Can you even, in essence, "reinstall" an unlock?
Click to expand...

Do not call tmobile for anything!!

As for the unlock...id have never sent it off without testing it first.
 
Vegastouch said:
As for the unlock...id have never sent it off without testing it first.
Click to expand...

I would have never unlocked it if I didn't think it would work. And I didn't have immediate access to a SIM card to test it out on.
 
Fyi

you can buy a sims from t-mobile for $10 I bought mine on sale at t-mobile site for $7 shipped just for this reason! technically a Pay as you go sims. but works for what we need!
 
Trauma1 said:
I thought about giving him the instructions guide and telling him to start over, but I don't know if he is able to do that himself. Also, I did technically sell him an unlocked phone. I would hate for him to have paid a premium for something that he has to do again on his own.
Click to expand...
The procedure is pretty straightforward if you explain it well enough. Everyone can do it, they just have to read the instructions.
 
Tell him to ship the phone back along with his sim so you canfix it if he doesn't want to do it himself.
 
TSX said:
Tell him to ship the phone back along with his sim so you canfix it if he doesn't want to do it himself.
Click to expand...

umm in that case the seller has the foot the shipping cost cause its the seller's mistake?

I hope its a domestic sale, shipping it back and forth you basically lost your profit margin
 
fishmd said:
I was also going to say that I thought I had to have my AT&T sim in as well when I unlocked the 3G that I sold.
Click to expand...

I had to leave mine out when unlocking and JB'ing. When i left it in using quickpwn it never worked so i just also left it out with Redsn0w and it worked fine. Of course it was still unlocked after i updated to 3.0 thru iTunes but ran the unlock anyways with it out and it was fine.
 
I haven't heard back from the buyer since the original post, but I'm beginning to wonder if it's a SIM card problem. I seem to remember that if you put a SIM card from another carrier into another carrier's locked phone, it explicitly says that the phone is locked to the carrier, or that it is unregistered. I checked the T-Mobile website and it confirms card incompatibility with the device and suggests getting a new one.

http://search.t-mobile.com/inquiraapp/ui.jsp?ui_mode=question&question_box=unlock

I did some more searching and it sounds like a new SIM card would do the trick.

http://www.talkiphone.com/forums/t-mobile/3006-t-mobile-sim-card-problem.html

I have explained this to the buyer so hopefully he will be able to solve this. If he doesn't want to do a restore and start all over again, I will be more than happy to do it myself and cover the shipping costs, but if it's his SIM card then it might be pointless.
 
Trauma1 said:
I haven't heard back from the buyer since the original post, but I'm beginning to wonder if it's a SIM card problem. I seem to remember that if you put a SIM card from another carrier into another carrier's locked phone, it explicitly says that the phone is locked to the carrier, or that it is unregistered. I checked the T-Mobile website and it confirms card incompatibility with the device and suggests getting a new one.

http://search.t-mobile.com/inquiraapp/ui.jsp?ui_mode=question&question_box=unlock

I did some more searching and it sounds like a new SIM card would do the trick.

http://www.talkiphone.com/forums/t-mobile/3006-t-mobile-sim-card-problem.html

I have explained this to the buyer so hopefully he will be able to solve this. If he doesn't want to do a restore and start all over again, I will be more than happy to do it myself and cover the shipping costs, but if it's his SIM card then it might be pointless.
Click to expand...

I unlocked mine with ultrasnow. I'm on ATT and had a tmobile sim from another person to test it out. At first it gave me the invalid sim or no sim. It would go in and out of that. I reset network settings, reboot, then turned off 3G. This worked for me although I suspect that turning of 3G is what fixed it because when I turned it back on I got the no sim message.
 
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