Carrier Lock SIM locked - need help

[Yosefadler01]

Hello,

I am living in Israel. My relatives gave me an iphone 11 pro max that was purchased and used for a few month in the Ukraine. When i tried to insert a sim card of an Israeli provider the phone got suddenly blocked. In order to unlock it I turned to the following company for services: https://www.officialsimunlock.com

and paid them for the service 17 USD. A few days later I received a message that was telling that my phone is locked my vodafone UK company and a request for an additional payment in the amount of 122 USD as unlock fee that i paid also. On the 4th of May i received a message that my iPhone is now permanently marked as unlocked in Apple's IMEI database but in fact my phone remained sim locked. I followed the instructions I received from them to complete the unlocking process, but none of the methods helped. My phone remained locked. I contacted the customer support several times but they just wrote the following text to me: 

"Dear Yosef

Please find below your completed unlock Apple report showing your device has been unlocked..." (I will attach the screenshot of this message)

Today on the 5th of May, after receiving this message i finally went to the official apple store in my country and after checking my phone the stuff told me that my phone is still 100% sim locked by vodafone! The stuff even let me take a picture of their computer screen where it is said that the phone is still locked by vodafone!

I can prove all of the above! I will upload some screenshots of the payment and of my request status. Please let me know if you need any other provements.

I am a decent person, I turned to this company because I did not know from the beginning that the phone belonged to the vodafone. I just found them on the Internet, they pretended to be an official company on these issues.

Did you received the money for unblocking my phone from the above mentioned company? 

Please provide help for my case.

Best regards

Yosef Adler

[MOD EDIT: This post has been edited to remove personal information, please see Community Guidelines]

[63johnw]

Hi @Yosefadler01  vodafone will not have received any money you have paid. In order for a phone that is locked to Vodafone to be unlocked then it must be in the UK and it is free, there is no charge, so unless you can send it to someone in the UK that you know then it won’t be unlocked. 

[Yosefadler01]

"Your phone is a very expensive device and is subsidised by the carrier over the length of your contract, the carrier requires this additional unlocking fee to cover their potential loss of revenue."

That is a fragment of a message received from that company. I will attach the full letter [MOD EDIT: This post has been edited to remove personal information, please see Community Guidelines]

[BandOfBrothers]

@Yosefadler01 

Vodafone UK do not charge an unlocking fee.

[BandOfBrothers]

Hello @Yosefadler01 

It sounds like the unlocking solutions the company you paid used have not worked. They will need to try again in my opinion or refund your money.

Please Check their Terms and Conditions.

Send them all your evidence.

Vodafone UK cannot help you I'm afraid as you are not the registered user with them.

Or Use the advice given by @63johnw 

The iPhone wouldn't suddenly lock to Vodafone UK if the phone was originally unlocked to all networks.

Have a word with your relative to ask who originally supplied the iPhone and ask them to speak with the company who supplied the iPhone to see if they can help unlocking it.

Is it possible the phone has become blacklisted somehow.

In the UK we have a website called checkmend where a person can check the current status of a phone. You may have something similar in your country.

www.checkmend.com/uk/ 

Ultimately you may need to consider selling the iPhone to accrue some funds to then buy one that accepts your sim card.

I wish you all the best with this.