IMEI Blacklisted on my Iphone

I got my Iphone from Apple store paid in full a year ago, without replacement. Never got lost or stolen. Few days ago, it showed no service on the signal bar. And it said 'phone not allowed’ under the networking setting.

First i thought it was the problem with the phone or sim card. After i try out all the trouble shooting steps with my phone, and swapped the sim cards with another phone, i found out the real problem is that the signal has been blocked from the carrier's side on this phone.

I used the T-mobile IMEI Checker website to confirm my assumption (https://www.t-mobile.com/resources/bring-your-own-phone) and found out it's under IMEI blacklist, which will block the phone from receiving any services. Looks like all I need to do is to contact my carrier and ask them to unblock me.  

There the drama began. It was such a tedious and painful experience for all sides and I hope none of you will experience this.

First, T-Mobile said they didn't block my phone, which was obviously, not align with what was written from their checker website. After I pointed that out, they transferred the call to several departments and all the supervisors, then told me they didn't find any blocking on my service.! 

I called again, hoping someone knows what was going on. Then the 2nd representative told me yes the phone was locked, and only Apple have the authority to do that. So I called Apple, and then Apple said no they can't block my phone through IMEI, only the carrier can. And two hours had past. 

I called T-Mobile again. The 3rd representative transferred my call to Apple technician, the technician and a senior technician walked me through every step that you can imagine to test out and try to fix this on your phone, which was nice, but unfortunately, didn't work. I was very frustrated and tried to let them know this is not something from my phone, this was something from the carrier's side. Three hours later, Apple technician realized it was not the phone, so they contacted T-Mobile IMEI technician, and we stayed online for another three hours, repeating the steps that Apple technician asked me to do, tyring to see if this is a real IMEI problem. And none of them knew who did it nor how to fix it.

By the end of the day, the T-Mobile technician let me know that the phone is blocked through a third party insurance (I didn't have insurance with this phone, so I thought it could be an insurance scam). They let me know the only way to unblock it is to prove that I am the owner of my phone by sending a receipt, then they will try to contact the third party and request the unblock for me within 72h. I appreciate their patience and was thinking this is finally going to be resolved. So I went to the local Apple store, printed the receipt and emailed it. Since I will need to be out of the town the other day, I tried to call the T-Mobile insurance company Assurant, hoping to get this fixed asap. However, according to them, my phone is not blocked and if it was, they didn't block it! 

The next day i tried all the third party IMEI check websites. One of them showed up that Verizon report the phone and put it into blacklist! (Web:https://www.imeipro.info/). That is a almost impossible situation because i am not Verizon customer how is that possible for them to block a T-mobile customer. But the reality is some rare things do happened in our life.

I spent 3 hours with Verizon customer service and found out their fraud team wrongfully reported my phone being purchased with false identity. They typed the wrong IMEI number when reporting the stolen/lost, and didn't realize my information did not align with the real requester's info until I made the call. Verizon made the mistake.  

Mystery solved. and my phone back to normal in 6 hour.

I want to share this crazy experience with people who has been in the same situation.

First. IMEI Blacklist is a national database. Any carrier can report a phone be lost or stolen and put Imei number into this database. All carrier download information from this database. So, Carrier can block phone to other carrier's customer.

Second, base on my understanding on IMEI blocking, Apple do not have ability to block phone through IMEI. Only carrier can block and unblock based on IMEI.

Third. Many things can happaned result for blocking. Lost stolen or insurance problem or unfortunately, a typo from the carrier.

Try to find out who block the IMEI is the most important because other carrier won't know what happened and may not be able to resolve this issue without many investigations, which may give you many troubles. The website i post can find out which carrier responsible for the blocking (For Now). Hope this is helpful for your guys!