Forum Discussion
Phone locked in SOS Mode After Traveling from Denver to Pittsburgh
Upon traveling from Denver to Pittsburgh my iphone 13 Mini would not connect with T-Mobile cell service and was locked in SOS mode the day after arriving, it did work the day of arrival. In 3 visits to T-mobile stores, getting a new sim card and one visit to the Apple Genius Bar no one could solve the problem although finally a technical T-Mobile person said the phone had somehow been put in a blocked status consistent with the phone being reported as lost or stolen. When I asked that it be unblocked, T-Mobile said that wasn't possible. I find that difficult to believe, because I suspect phones are lost or stolen frequently and the found or recovered, so I'm sure there is a mechanism to restore them to normal status. The Apple Store put the new sim card in a different phone and it connected, so it was definitely a phone specific issue. Upon returning to Denver, the phone magically returned to normal. My question therefore is whether or not anyone else has experienced this situation and why T-Mobile would tell me they can't fix that status?
Denver Bob wrote:
I appreciate your response, I actually spent nearly two hours at an Apple Store at the alleged Genius Bar where they assured me there was nothing wrong with the phone. This appears to be, after much research, a carrier problem, whereby any carrier can mistakenly blacklist your specific phone. The prevailing wisdom is that only that specific carrier can un-blacklist the phone. All carriers seem to honor indiscriminate blacklisting and will not intervene, even if you've never done business with the carrier who mistakenly blacklisted. I suspect. the only resolution is a class action lawsuit, which unfortunately would be treated by all carriers as a cost of doing business rather than a wake-up call.
going out on a limb and saying its not carrier specific. at least not with the SOS deal..
It was worth a shot. There were multiple threads like this on Apple support.
It's strange that this happened while you were in the air and presumably had the phone in airplane mode.
Try going to swappa.com and do an imei# check. If it's been reported lost or stolen it will let you know that the phone can't be sold on their site.
Good luck getting this sorted out.
I appreciate your response, I actually spent nearly two hours at an Apple Store at the alleged Genius Bar where they assured me there was nothing wrong with the phone. This appears to be, after much research, a carrier problem, whereby any carrier can mistakenly blacklist your specific phone. The prevailing wisdom is that only that specific carrier can un-blacklist the phone. All carriers seem to honor indiscriminate blacklisting and will not intervene, even if you've never done business with the carrier who mistakenly blacklisted. I suspect. the only resolution is a class action lawsuit, which unfortunately would be treated by all carriers as a cost of doing business rather than a wake-up call.
Have you tried this from the Apple support page?
Latest update: T-Mobile Customer Service now incredulously claims this is an iPhone problem affecting 2.5 million (I'm not making this number up) iPhones. Also had no record of me visits to their T-Mobile stores nor calls I made to T-Mobile Customer Service, even though I was assured during one of those calls, which occurred while I was in an Apple Store, my problem would be "escalated". Their customer service could not be more abysmal.
