Nota beni: I am totally blind and have congestive heart failure with regular episodes of ventricular tachycardia. Keep all of that in mind as you read this.

Back in June of 2018, I bought a Motorola G6, an Android phone, through Amazon. Yeah they’re a terrible company, but that’s a topic for another rant. We didn’t do our research. This device was sold as a “Prime Exclusive”. Essentially, that means that it came preloaded with Amazon bloatware, and that the bootloader was locked. Ok fine, whatever. I was working at the time, and I really needed the phone. I was on pager rotation too. I could – and did – write it off as a work expense.

Fast forward 2 years to September of 2020. That was when my Moto G6 stopped receiving updates, even security updates. In a sane world, I would’ve just installed a third-party ROM like Lineage and gone about my business. After all, I had managed to add years of useful life to a previous phone by doing just that. But recall that my Motorola has a locked bootloader. Motorola does have a website that will let you unlock the bootloader on their devices, but they wouldn’t give me an unlock code, because the phone was sold through Amazon and locked to Amazon. I do still have it around here somewhere. If someone wants a ticking time bomb, I’ll gladly sell it. Addendum: I called both Amazon and Motorola. Both refuse to unlock the bootloader on it, even though it is well out of warranty and hasn’t received software updates in over 3.5 years.

Fast forward to May of 2023, when I decided to buy an iPhone. Essentially, I did it because I got tired of hearing my girlfriend Deedra complain every time I borrowed her phone to scan printed mail and other items. I bought it off Ebay, as open-box. It’s cheap, I don’t have a lot of money, and I’d rather not pay premium prices to Apple for something brand new. Their phones do at least have great accessibility. The details on this phone claimed that it was an unlocked iPhone 2022 SE. But I was asked a bunch of customization questions, including “select network”. What the hell. So I left AT&T selected.

A few days later, my phone was delivered. I have a pay-as-you-go SIM card through jmp.chat. This is great for someone who very rarely uses cell service. They charge $7 a gig and are data-only. But that’s fine, because I already use jmp.chat for VOIP service, so data-only is perfect. I call over SIP and text over XMPP, and I cannot recommend this service highly enough. And while the $7 per gig sounds high, it isn’t, when you consider that I only use cell service for hailing ride-share, GPS programs, and the very occasional phone call. It’s much cheaper than paying carriers significant amounts of money each month for service I barely use. So I pop the new SIM card into my “unlocked” iPhone. Well, actually, Deedra does it, because she’s better at that sort of thing. And the phone refuses to accept my SIM card! My unlocked phone is locked to AT&T.

They have a “device unlock” page on the web. So I tried that. It failed with a message saying that my phone could not be unlocked because service was cancelled during the 14-day return period. WTF does that mean?

I spent a few hours that day dealing with AT&T, trying to get my phone unlocked. I talked to their script-reading customer support people over the phone, and then I took it in to not one, but two local AT&T stores. At the second store, the person I spoke with intimated that it might have been stolen. “Ok fine. If it’s stolen, I have the phone right here in my hand, and I’m perfectly happy to give it to you and also give you the receipt from the place where I bought it.” “Oh no, that won’t do. You need to get a refund from Ebay.”

I didn’t have the spoons to fight with the seller on Ebay. I told them I’d expected an unlocked phone and they sold me a locked one. And then they tried to tell me that I’d intentionally bought a locked phone. Well maybe I had. After all, I left the AT&T box checked. Maybe I was confused. Not enough spoons to fight this.

One of the people I spoke with at AT&T also told me that they could unlock my phone if I had AT&T service for at least 60 days. What the hell. I’ll sign up and then get my phone unlocked! I’ll be out some more money, but I can live with it. So I do that, and for the next couple months, I pay AT&T somewhere around $100 per month for service I barely used. I think I used like 442 megs of cell data in 2 months. And no cellular voice or text, because I already have VOIP that can work over cell data. Once 60 days had passed, I tried unlocking again. They still refused to unlock my device. I cancelled my service. Fuck these clowns.

More months pass. I’m perfectly ok having a wi-fi-only smartphone. I can at least dial 911 on it if I need to, because phones without cell service can always be used for emergency calls here in the US.

Then in February I landed in the hospital for a week. Not only that, but they transferred me from my local hospital to a university hospital in Portland. Thankfully hospitals tend to have excellent wi-fi service, so I was able to make calls, listen to audio streams, and so forth. Yeah, that’s great. After nearly a week’s stay, they discharge me. And I realize that what I really need is cell service. I could theoretically borrow some money from a friend and pay for a very expensive Lyft to get home. I could even hail Lyft over hospital wi-fi. I’ve done it before; works fine. I don’t want to be riding in a Lyft for over an hour with no way to call my family and such. If the Lyft driver drops me off at the wrong corner, I don’t want to be stumbling around unable to get help. Long story short, I end up sweet-talking the hospital into getting me a cab, and I got home in one piece.

In March,I get this bright idea. I’m going to try one of these phone unlocking services. The one I ended up trying was Doctor SIM. After doing some initial checks, they tell me that “Your phone is not reported lost or stolen, and it does not have any outstanding bills, but we cannot unlock it via the basic unlock service”. I paid $256.95 for their premium unlock service, and this morning, I get a message saying that they still can’t unlock my phone and they’re refunding my money. They did in fact refund it, too!

My next bright idea was to buy a mobile hotspot. So I do that. This one is actually unlocked! It’s a few years old, but that’s ok. When I got it, I realized that it took a micro SIM, but all I had was a nano SIM. So I ordered a SIM adapter. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the SIM to fit into the hotspot even with the adapter. Three people – including one with sight – tried and failed.

Ok, I’ll order a new SIM card. I do that, and it arrives. We break it down to a micro SIM and try to put it in the hotspot. It breaks, giving me part of a SIM card and a piece of plastic lodged in my device. After some man-handling, I pried the plastic bit out, but I’m pretty sure I destroyed my hotspot irreparably in the process.

At the end of March, I decided to file a complaint against AT&T with the Better Business Bureau. AT&T followed up with me, and I got a call from someone in the office of the president of AT&T. I spent half an hour to an hour having a fruitless discussion with him. I’ll try and paraphrase it.

Me: So I have this phone, which is apparently not lost or stolen. However, it is locked to AT&T and AT&T refuses to unlock it.

Him: I can’t unlock the phone, because it isn’t fully paid off.

Me: So the phone isn’t fully paid off, yet I bought it from a third party? Isn’t that the moral equivalent of (unknowingly) buying fenced goods?

He never gave me a direct answer to that question, just a bunch of corporate deflection.

Me: Ok then, so the phone isn’t fully paid off. Can I just pay the remaining balance on the thing and get it unlocked?

Him: No, because you weren’t the person who originally purchased the device from us. If you had the account info (including the passcode) for the customer that bought it, we’d let you pay it off.

Me: You won’t let me pay you the remaining balance on this device, but you’re more than happy to let me use it on your network?

Him: Yes.

We eventually looped back around to “How is this device not considered stolen?” It devolved from there, and I wasted my time.

At this point, I have a few more options to try, but I’ll probably end up pawning these devices. The Motorola is essentially e-waste, thanks to Amazon, and the iPhone isn’t usable as a cellphone unless I want to pay AT&T’s prices.

Yes, I fucking hate smartphones.

Post scriptum October 2024: I gave the iPhone away to a person in need via the Buy Nothing group on Farcebook. The old Motorola is still with me, in my closet, awaiting a fitting end at the local ewaste disposal facility. There’s still time for anyone who believes in locked down devices to buy it from me!