Not broadband related, but EE lost a customer permanently towards the end of last year (me). Having completed my mobile contract with them (been in contract with them for a total of 3 and a bit years, account in good standing, all bills paid for on time etc), left with an iPhone 4, they refused to unlock the phone even though the phone now belonged to me and was fully paid for. For some crazy reason, I presumed (my bad) that after the initial 2 year contract finished, they would unlock the phone automatically (by a SIM update; I did receive some kind of SIM update when I downgraded to a cheaper tariff at the end of the 2 year initial). But I have since realised the hard way that none of this was the case.
Not only that, the way they handled this insane situation was to inform me every time I called them that... the unlock would be done within the next X days etc. But it never was; I ended up wasting about 2 months of my time because of this.
It took an email to their CEO, and a subsequent wait of around 2 weeks for a reply from him, to be told the following:
Further to your recent email.
For Orange to unlock your phone you would need an active Orange account, either Pay as You GO (PAYG) or Pay Monthly. The handset has to registered against the account for a minimum of 6 months.
The number 07XXXXXXXXX was transferred to PAYG August and then ported to another network. As you elected to close the PAYG account down Orange would have no way of charging you for the unlock code. Your original Pay Monthly account also shows no unlock requests were made and therefore no Handset Unlock charges were applied to the account.
If you now require the phone to be unlocked you would be required to now set up an Orange PAYG account and register this phone against the account. As your tenure has been broken this will reset your account history and you will be required to have the handset registered for 6 months before an unlock code can be requested.
This is the only option available to you should you want Orange to unlock your handset from the Orange network. If this is an option you wish to take please purchase a PAYG SIM card from your nearest EE store, and register both the handset and details in your name.
Unless the phone is registered to an active Orange we would be unable to request the phone to be unlocked.
Whilst I appreciate this may not be the response you had hoped for, I trust I have explained the reasons why we are unable to unlock this phone.
Yours sincerely
Alan Holcroft
Executive Office, EE
The bit about "not having a way to charge me for unlocking the phone" really epitomises what EE are and how they work - basically, a joke of a business.
In retrospect, I probably should have requested the phone to be unlocked before I migrated my number off to giffgaff. But really, it shouldn't be this way, and the above email clearly demonstrates exactly the type of company they are, and how they operate. I will not be doing business with them ever again.
Good luck to those who continue to entertain their antics. Personally, I have better things to do with my time than get wound up dealing with companies that clearly take the p! out of (ex-)customers, and more importantly, don't appear to give a s! in the process of doing so.
FYI, I ended up trading in the iPhone 4 directly with Apple to offset the price of purchasing a new unlocked iPhone 5S. Glad this incident is now well and truly behind me tbh.
Edited by deleted (Wed 05-Mar-14 21:50:38)
Pages in this thread: 
Print Thread
