They are getting ready to shut down their 3G towers, so all old devices must be purged. So they sent me some Samsung phone for free, then shut off my 1+6. WTF? The girl insisted that "the list" is always right, even though this phone has been LTE for years.
It's not just being LTE capable, it also needs to be VoLTE capable, which the 6 is, but is incorrectly listed on their blacklist. I've seen reddit threads that talk of AT&T customers taking the issue up with tech support and they've been able to whitelist their individual phone (reportedly).
I'm currently running my 6 with VoLTE enabled on Consumer Cellular (MVNO) using AT&T so am hoping that the blacklist is not enforced via IMEI. Come February I'll find out.
AT&T customer support doesn't have a clue....escalate!
Switch to T-Mobile. It is the ONLY way. AT&T don't care. I filed an FCC complaint and even that didn't really work unless you are willing to hire a lawyer.
Having the same experience. Spent hours on the phone with them. They actually shiped me some $75 replacment phone. Talked to over 20 people from AT&T all were clueless and gave me different answers. Some said my phone would work, others said it wouldn't.
Finnally they actually put a note on my account that my Oneplus 6 would still work, so if it doesn't work I'll hvae it in writing and I'll ask them for an account credit of $800 (the cost of my oneplus)
I had the same happen to me with ATT sending me a Galaxy S9 refurb.
I explained to customer service and also escalated up to the manager who basically was useless and said we can't do anything to whitelist the device. It basically comes down to the idiots at ATT not having tested the OP6 and so they just blacklisted all IMEIs associated with OP6.
I even swapped out my SIM card with another iphone SE which has VoLTE and the VoLTE lit up on my phone for a few seconds before I lost service completely as stupid ATT automatically blacklisted the SIM and the device claiming fraudulent activity and I had to spend another half hour getting my service restored on both the phones but still no VoLTE on the OP6 because it is ATT.
ATT is absolutely the crappiest customer centric company.
Nearly switched to TMo before the hacking news broke so waiting a bit before switching out of ATT after more than 15 years of service with them.
ATT enabled VOLTE on my phone a few weeks ago without me even asking for it.
They had somehow suspended my number and completely booted my phone off the network -- I took it to an ATT store, they worked their magic and within 5 minutes it was back online _with_ VOLTE!
The easiest way is to change imei i just changed my device imei for a supported imei by att and it works like a charm
If the 6 won't work why do they have to block it? Any why put a hold on the phone number not the imei or sim? Picked up a TMobile sim and it works great.
Related
Hey guys, I'm new here and I had a couple of questions before I bought a used Fuze. Right now I have verizon and I am switching over to att because my contract is over.
1. I am scared to buy a used fuze because if I buy a used one from someone and it is stolen can it still be activated?
I know that if I buy a verizon phone that is stolen then it can't be activated.
not sure how you handle it in usa but in europe I never had to activate any phone
just pop in the sim and type in the sim code
heard about the aktivating in usa in relation to iphones
The thing is that I'm gonna sign a 2 year contract with att, I just wanted to know if I buy a used phone and it is stolen will I still be able to use it.
I am not going to take a chance on buying a stolen phone if I can't use it.
Get a phone you know for sure isn't stolen, make sure it comes with all the accessories and box and then you can feel safe.
Do not buy a phone if you know it is stolen, that is both illegal and wrong.
if you buy a stolen phone which have been reported stolen the police give
the IMEI number hardcoded in the phone to the operators to be added to their
block of service list in the country
and other countries the operators have a working relationship with
Ya ok, then the best thing to do is buy a new phone.
I was saying that if I buy a used phone and it is stolen then I wouldn't be able to activate it.
I didn't mean to say I WAS gonna buy a stolen phone, no no.
Thanks guys. Goin to get it in an hour!
if you're signing a 2 yr contract anyways, why not get a subsidized phone straight from ATT. up until a few days ago, wireless att com website had the refurbished Fuze for FREE w/ 2yr contract. just checked website now and it is out of stock. they go in-out of stock so call in and ask.
atlaswing said:
if you're signing a 2 yr contract anyways, why not get a subsidized phone straight from ATT. up until a few days ago, wireless att com website had the refurbished Fuze for FREE w/ 2yr contract. just checked website now and it is out of stock. they go in-out of stock so call in and ask.
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Thats a deal, I'll call them and ask about it. Thanks
Here in the USA we don't have the IMEI blocking service, even if the phone was stolen you can still use it. When my Blackberry was stolen I called AT&T to report it and all they could do was block my PIN from the device and not the device itself. It's not like Verizon or in any other country.
mbudden said:
Here in the USA we don't have the IMEI blocking service, even if the phone was stolen you can still use it. When my Blackberry was stolen I called AT&T to report it and all they could do was block my PIN from the device and not the device itself. It's not like Verizon or in any other country.
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verizon uses CDMA... if (for whatever reason) you need to change phones, you have to go through Verizon to activate the ESN(cdma version of IMEI) on the phone to tie to your Verizon account
for GSM, as long as the phone is unlocked, just slip the SIM card into in and the phone should work
one reason why i like GSM better: you don't have to do much to get a replacement phone
So I have a unique situation on my hands. I bought a couple if phones from people on the seattle cl. I live in Canada and sold one of them here and kept the other one for myself.
I just got a call from someone in seattle who somehow got my number. She said that the guy who sold me phone #1 basically pulled some shady stuff and some people got ripped off. The girl who got ripped off supposedly called att and they are disabling the phone via its imei number.
Now what am I to do? I can't get the phone back to the girl. I don't have the money to refund the guy I sold it to. He hasn't contacted me out anything and the girl said it had been a week since Att was contacted. I would feel pretty damn guilty if the guys phone was disabled. Should I contact him? Or I could just let it be and see what happens.
Can att even remotely disable a phone when its in another country. I know for sure that I couldn't connect to their servers to get the ota jh7 update.
Just be wary when buying from cl, people. The guy who sold it to me seemed like a perfectly nice guy and even made up some bs about switching over to a t mobile family plan with his dad.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
they can't disable it if its not on their network.
First of all ATT cant disable phones from their network. Second of all, you did nothing wrong, so its not your responsibility to make it up to anyone.
It sounds shady that "some girl" got your number and called u to tell u that. That in itself sounds shady. I'm all is fine. As long as your handset works who cares
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Unless she is willing to file a complaint in Canada stating that the phone was stolen there, and provide your information as benefiting from that theft, you have nothing to worry about. Given that she said it was taken in the US. You are clear from any liability. Until we annex Canada.
If someone resells the phone back to the US then it would be a problem for them.
well i have first hand knowledge that ATT CAN block imei numbers i had a Dell Streak Beta that they blocked and when there system would recongnize that i had that imei# they would block my sim and i would have to call in to have them remove the block by giving them the IMEI number of a "good" Att phone. so it CAN be done.
So if they disable a certain imei, is that only pertaining to their network? Say he visits the us and att does their voodoo magic. Will it work again when he's back in canada?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
leecox said:
Until we annex Canada.
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The way our country is going, I wouldn't be surprised if they beat us to it!
Another live and learn. If you buy electronics off Craig's List you get what you get be it legit or not. So many stories of friends buying Cisco stuff only to find out upon arrival it's not what they were lead to believe it was.
IMEIs can be blocked by operators but in the US it is not common practice. The reason you couldn't do the JH7 OTA from outside of the US is because it can only be done from their network. You can't even do it over WiFi.
If your phone was blocked you wouldn't even be able to attach to the network. And if that's the case, maybe someone messed with the PRI our other network settings.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
AT&T can most certainly block certain IMEIs, however it's only done in extreme situations and it's not like some AT&T customer service rep can decide to block a phone from the network. I read about how the Dell Streak beta/dev phones were all blocked, but those were beta phones and AT&T wanted them out of circulation. They aren't going to use resources that high up to block a single phone from the network.
I'm sure someone could call and say "oh my phone was stolen", but all that will happen is the SIM linked to the account of the "victim" will get shut down, not the handset itself.
nooomoto said:
AT&T can most certainly block certain IMEIs, however it's only done in extreme situations and it's not like some AT&T customer service rep can decide to block a phone from the network. I read about how the Dell Streak beta/dev phones were all blocked, but those were beta phones and AT&T wanted them out of circulation. They aren't going to use resources that high up to block a single phone from the network.
I'm sure someone could call and say "oh my phone was stolen", but all that will happen is the SIM linked to the account of the "victim" will get shut down, not the handset itself.
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Wrong if someone calls at&t and say "oh my phone was stolen"! that imei will be added the list of blocked imei's in the past the only way to find out someone was using a blocked imei is if they called customer server and gave the stolen imei because the phone did not commiunite the imei of the phone being use on the network but now phones will update the imei on the network with you calling them!
subzerologic said:
Wrong if someone calls at&t and say "oh my phone was stolen"! that imei will be added the list of blocked imei's in the past the only way to find out someone was using a blocked imei is if they called customer server and gave the stolen imei because the phone did not commiunite the imei of the phone being use on the network but now phones will update the imei on the network with you calling them!
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How would AT&T know you had the legal right to block a given IMEI? How many AT&T bought phones are sold on eBay every day? Standard AT&T policy is unless it has the potential to disrupt the network, they DO NOT block IMEIs without a warrant or other legal justification.
And BTW, details of the mobile equipment including IMEI are communicated to the network every time you attach to it. That's what makes blocking phones possible.
OP, AT&T does not block IMEIs simply at a customer's request and they certainly can't block anything running outside of their own network.
Thanks for the info guys. Worry free now! haha
Will the Nexus 5 sold by Sprint or Best Buy be sim locked? I want to know because sometimes I travel to areas where sprint's coverage lacking to put it politely. I would like to be able to pop in a prepaid sim like a straight talk AT&T or T-Mobile sim to use in those areas while I am there and not have to deal with unlocking the phone through sprint.
I don't want to see people telling me I am wasting my time/money on getting the device through sprint. I get a good discount on my service through them from work and honestly since the network upgrades have started in my area the 3g and LTE I pick up occasionally have been surprisingly good so I am ok with a 2 year agreement on the phone.
Would Google even allow sprint to sell it with a carrier lock on the sim card since it is supposed to be a trueNexus this time around even on CDMA?
ktt4510 said:
Will the Nexus 5 sold by Sprint or Best Buy be sim locked? I want to know because sometimes I travel to areas where sprint's coverage lacking to put it politely. I would like to be able to pop in a prepaid sim like a straight talk AT&T or T-Mobile sim to use in those areas while I am there and not have to deal with unlocking the phone through sprint.
I don't want to see people telling me I am wasting my time/money on getting the device through sprint. I get a good discount on my service through them from work and honestly since the network upgrades have started in my area the 3g and LTE I pick up occasionally have been surprisingly good so I am ok with a 2 year agreement on the phone.
Would Google even allow sprint to sell it with a carrier lock on the sim card since it is supposed to be a trueNexus this time around even on CDMA?
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I don't believe so. We've been told all the N5's are the same so it would be logical to assume that they won't be SIM locked. But no way to know for sure until someone buys one from Sprint to test it out.
Ok so just a quick update to this. I got mine in the mail last night and decided to rty it out. I put a prepaid sim from a friend in the phone and it worked just fine. Connected to LTE data on AT&T and made calls no problem. So for any wondering if sprint decided to lock the phone I can confirm that is unlocked just as the phone would be if purchased from Google directly.
Normally when you buy the phone from a carrier, and if you loose your phone, call in and get it blacklisted and people can check the database to see if it blacklisted and all that good stuff...
I bought my N5 from Google Play and can use it on any carrier, so if its lost/stolen, do I call the current carrier and have them blacklist it?
What if someone got a hold of my IMEI and called to get it blacklisted.. how would I go about getting it unblacklisted if I wasnt the one who called it in???
Does google have their own blacklisting database?
I'm pretty sure your carrier will not blacklist the phone till the caller can confirm that they are the owner of the phone (maybe by carrier's records, or by proof of purchase etc).
But since the N5 can be used on other carriers, a carrier blacklist is really not sufficient (if the phone is stolen). I would certainly hope that Google has their own blacklist that will prevent the device from accessing any google services.
I found a story on somewere else of an user whose Google play. N5 got blacklisted by Spring
These are 2 quotes fro the same person:
AIO's website says my Google Nexus 5 is on the lost and stolen list?
Device Reported Lost or Stolen
Our records show that this device is on the national lost and stolen list. Please contact the company that previously provided wireless service for this device for help.
Aio Wireless cannot activate a device that another wireless company added to this list.
This phone was purchased from the Google Play Store. It's been on RingPlus, and StraightTalk (which it's currently on). Is it possible that someone marked it lost or stolen, but it's still working without any problems on ST? It might have been on Net10, I did have the SIM card in it, but I don't think it was active.
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I just got off the phone with Google support. That took around an hour of my time. The Google rep was quite lost on to why in the world Sprint would EVER blacklist phones that were not lost or stolen and have no contracts with them. I was put on hold a couple of times, and I explained what happened. After talking to him, I was transferred to the shipping dept (which apparently takes care of all returns for any reason).
The rep in the shipping dept was very nice, but he kept wanting to give me a refurbished phone for something I never did anything wrong with to begin with. My battery is charged at 50% all the time and I don't want to get stuck with a used phone or a bad battery. I kept telling the rep that I even have an email from RingPlus explaining the situation and that my phone was activated before they knew of this secret blacklist that included Google Play store purchases. He told me he would talk to his lead, came back, and claims that they will be sending me a new device. I don't know if I'm actually getting a used or new device, but at least when it comes it will hopefully not be blacklisted.
I was hoping to switch over to another carrier to save a few dollars each month. So after a $431 dollar hold was put onto my credit card, I guess I wait 3-5 business days and see what I end up receiving in the mail. I'll have to reorder one of the glass screen protectors for my device.
I guess this was a learning experience. Be very careful what CDMA carriers can do to your devices, because they need to have the numbers for it as they can't just pop in a SIM card and go. I'm not sure I will ever be using a Sprint or Verizon MVNO again, or at least for quite a while, and wouldn't ever do it with any devices less then a few months old.
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Original article. http://www.howardforums.com/showthr...Google-Nexus-5-is-on-the-lost-and-stolen-list
Not sure about the US, but in europe some countries/carriers have joint IMEI databases. If one carrier marks the IMEI as stolen the phone won't work on any carrier in that country.
Sent from my Nexus 5
liud said:
Not sure about the US, but in europe some countries/carriers have joint IMEI databases. If one carrier marks the IMEI as stolen the phone won't work on any carrier in that country.
Sent from my Nexus 5
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I know this.. thats the situation with in Canada, US and so on... that wasnt my question...
I just thought I would relate my newbie story on this for any other newbies.
My son bought a TMobile 4G Slide from Ebay a few months ago for $50 and used it on TMobile Prepay no problem, then wanted to move it to Consumer Cellular (he's a low volume user so their plans would be a much better deal for him)
So he asked me to move the phone. I did make him root it for the experience but since the financial stuff required credit cards and he's only 16 I took care of the accounting stuff.
So first thing was ordering the SIM card from CC. That came the next week and I plugged it into his phone. No dice, the phone wanted a network unlock code. I expected that but just wanted to check.
So I called TMobile for the unlock code. Got transferred to pre pay tech support. Ok no problem. Pre Pay TMobile tech support says 'we won't unlock it because there's an amount owing, call our contracts dept."
After wasting an hour or so getting transferred around it finally dawned on me the issue - TMobile has separate tech support departments for Prepay and Postpay accounts. Because this phone had been originally bought on a Postpay account, the Prepay support people couldn't lookup **** on the IMEI number. So I call back in and this time ask for a representative and asked to get transferred to postpay customer service.
I finally get a knowledgeable rep. from Postpay who can look up the IMEI number. He tells me "the IMEI on this one is perfectly clean, there's no outstanding insurance claims or unpaid bills" So much for the dingbats in the other support group.
But, there's a problem. The rep explains that the only way to request a network unlock code on a TMobile phone is to call in, identify yourself as the contract holder (with the phone number of the account, and the PIN) for the matching account that was last used on the phone. If the phone was sold as prepay then you have to call in as the last prepay telephone number to come up on the phone, if the phone was originally sold as post pay you have to call in as a post pay account holder for the account the phone's IMEI was last used on. He said go back to the guy you bought the phone from and ask them to network unlock it.
So I'm stuck. So I dig around in my junk box and come up with an older TMobile 3G slide. This is the predecessor to the 4G slide, it was made by HTC and was used on my wife's TMobile post pay account (which is still active) until she upgraded. So I call into TMobile with that phone, give them the IMEI and a few days later I get an email from TMobile with a network unlock code for the 3G.
I stick in the Consumer Cellular SIM to the 3G and it comes up. But, it cannot get on the CC data network. Voice and text work fine, data does not. I call CC's tech support and they try a bunch of different things, nothing works. They say "well sorry you will just have to upgrade your phone"
So now I'm back to the 4G Slide. So I start searching the Internet can come up with http://unlockcode247.com/ They want $4 to unlock the phone, I figure what the hell. I send them the IMEI and the money and a few hours later I get an unlock code.
The code works, the phone gets on the CC network, and now both voice and data are working just fine.
As I'm in the UK I didn't even bother with Tmobile when I bought my 4G Slide a couple of years ago.. Bought a code on Ebay from somebody with high rating.. Quick and easy.
I did neither, since I came across this post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1848234
Why pay for a code or hassle with T-Mo when the code is already sitting on the phone?