iPhone 14 Pro Max "iPhone Unavailable"

[GoCubsGo]

I searched the forums and found this thread that gave me some hope to resolve my issue. Interestingly enough, my story is a lot like the poster's friend, unexpected long stay in a hospital ICU. Without details, I was on heavy amounts of Propofol, but during times I was awake I would have died on a hill claiming I was completely alert. During this time, I was handed my iPhone to call someone and entered my passcode. After a few (I would have said 2 but that apparently is a lie) I would get the iPhone Unavailable screen and a countdown timer. First it was 10-15 minutes, then 60, then BAM! A giant F off from Apple. I did not have access to a phone in ICU; therefore, I had to wait 5 weeks to get transferred to a room with a phone.

tl;dr
Is there anything else I can do without the remote wipe? I am told I must go in person and pay. I get it, I did this, I would not have done it had I actually been alert and not sitting there with a drug in me and a tube down my throat. Bygones.

@Bigwaff was the commenter who gave me hope. The comment and thread is here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/locked-iphone-iphone-unavailable.2447333/post-33675013

Unfortunately, I have only the message that the iPhone is unavailable and I can make emergency calls (911) because I rose a stink about it being taken away prior to March tornados. This thread indicated an erase option on the screen, I do not have that.

I have tried multiple ways using Verizon's "pro help", Apple's help (they just said it was a Verizon problem), and the great Google. I used my laptop and my iPad to connect and still did not have success. I have my Apple ID and iCloud password. Basically, it came down to connect to another machine and remotely wipe. I simply do not have that opportunity for some reason.

Additional info, probably not relevant:

Unfortunately, up until March 14th, after my town was .5 miles from a tornado touchdown, I realized Verizon took away the option to call emergency services. All was fine for me, but other towns were not so fine. I have been without a way to make calls (I have two very aged machines 2014 iPad and 2011 MacBook Pro) that will not let me grab an app to make a call without paying.

Apple said I had to go to Verizon, Verizon said they cannot remote wipe. So some dude can hack the stock exchange on a Monday (happened while I was in the hospital), but Verizon nor Apple can remote wipe. I was told to get to a town about 55 miles away and pay a third party authorized repair dealer. I can handle restoration, but I cannot get to the other city.

 

[Bigwaff]

I have my Apple ID and iCloud password.

Then you should be able to log into iCloud via a web browser and use the FindMy service to remotely erase the device.. assuming...

1) you were logged into iCloud on your iPhone
2) you had FindMy turned on
3) your Verizon service is still active or device near a known WiFi

Otherwise, you have no choice but to reset (i.e. erase) the device following instructions here -

If you see a iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro unavailable message or Security Lockout screen - Apple Support

If you forgot your device passcode, you can use your Apple Account and password to erase and reset your device without a computer.

support.apple.com

 

[BigBlur]

I am told I must go in person and pay.

This is incorrect. Apple Stores and authorized retailers should not be charging you to have your phone (iOS) restored.

I realized Verizon took away the option to call emergency services.

Are you sure? This would be illegal in the US. All cellphones are required to be able to call emergency services, even if the phone doesn't have a cellular plan.

3) ... or device near a known WiFi

Just to add, this will only work if the phone has been unlocked (in order to unlock the keychain where Wi-Fi passwords are stored). If the phone has ever been shut down/rebooted (which I'm guessing was attempted here at some point), there's no way it'll connect to Wi-Fi. Otherwise, I agree...most likely going to have to rely on your cellular data connection, restore it using a computer yourself, or by taking it somewhere.

 

[Stella_Fudge]

authorized retailers should not be charging you to have your phone (iOS) restored.

Technically they're only not allowed to do that if it's a device that's under limited warranty or AppleCare plus, but this is only contractually. In reality many of them still do that sort of thing, specifically because the process of getting a labor credit reimbursement from Apple for that work is such an incredible pain in the ass and involves escalating to a team, documenting stuff via Service Non-Repair Repairs (Repair ID thats basically associted with a non-repair service), and chasing down the money for as much as a month just to get effectively like 12USD back per person. High effort, low reward. There's also basically no way of validating that an AASP is doing that if there is no complaints from the customer, and even if the customer complains it's also very trivial to just ignore a phone call from the Apple phone advisors, at which point they're not gonna keep a customer on the line forever and will just issue their own little appeasement instead and move on. Enough of these could technically trigger an audit of the service provider, but the amount of people who actually call to complain about this sort of practice is so infrequent, and for my own experience a decent amount of these customers are also the type to have somewhat entitled behavior with other things so it's also very easy to dismiss it as just nonsensical complaints from them. In many cases it's easier for AASP's to just say that they have to charge for it since it's not a hardware repair, and 95% of customers don't really question it and just pay it to avoid having to go/deal with the Apple Store or they just don't wanna pay and leave and that's the end of the interaction forever. Is it crappy? Absolutely, but Apple doesn't give service providers the incentive to do the work for free by virtue of actually paying a reasonable amount for the time involved or make it easy to get that money from them in the first place, nor do they necessarily bring down the hammer over the practice either. Many AASP behaviors largely revolve around the way Apple pays them for things, or whatever rules it imposes, since theyre otherwise powerless to work outside the bounds Apple creates.

For out of warranty devices though, it is 100% fair game. there's nothing in their license agreement with Apple that forbids that and nothing and Apples own terms of service on customers end says that software stuff is always free for life. They have full control over how they want to price out of warranty work as long as they work within the rules Apple imposes onto them.

A lot of amboguity tends to come from Apple phone/chat advisors, especially the ones working for the outsourced 3rd party vendors like KellyConnect and Transcom and Conduent and nsuch (which is like roughly 80% of Apple advisors globally now)since they have a tendency of setting the expectation that its going to be free at AASP's, specifically because that's exactly the way that it works at the Apple Store regardless of warranty status, and because AASP's *should* be doing it fofr free for Warranty/AC+ repairs, and they just make the assumption that it applies to Out Of Warranty without necessarily verifying by calling AASP's and asking, or checking the pricing tool that Apple created for AASP's to forward into to Advisors. Pretty much majority of AASP's will charge for software restores/work ut of warranty because the cost of upkeep a service provider is crazy high and the amount of money they make from Apple directly is diminishing year over a year for all sorts of other reasons, and often charge for ones in warranty too because reasons above.

 

[Stella_Fudge]

Is there anything else I can do without the remote wipe? I am told I must go in person and pay. I get it, I did this, I would not have done it had I actually been alert and not sitting there with a drug in me and a tube down my throat. Bygones.

The iPhone will enter into this "iPhone unavailable" mode whenever you basically enter the passcode incorrectly 10 or more attempts. Once it happens, in overwhelming amount of cases you basically just have to bite the bullet and just wipe the phone at that point and hope to God that you either had a pre-existing backup on iCloud/a computer, or you pay for enough iCloud storage to accommodate syncing all the different features and you had all the different features turned on. Basically you're just relying on whatever is left in iCloud or whatever backup that might exist if you made one in the past

Or option B if your phone is connected to Wi-Fi/cellular, and you know both your Apple ID and the Apple ID password, you can log into https://icloud.com/find and then basically remotely erase the iPhone. This only works though if you have Find My turned on, which 99.9% of people will but there are occasionally people that turn it off either by accident and then forget, or turn it off because they need to bring the device in for repair and then forget to turn it on, or turn it off on purpose because of whatever weird ideas they read online. If you disabled to Find My at some point in the past then option B is not available for you, or if your phone is not connected to cellular and can't connect to Wi-Fi for any reason than option B is also unavailable.

With that said, what you can try to do is to put the phone into recovery mode, grab a PC or a Mac, and *update* the device. For whatever reason, which I've yet to figure out why it happens, it will sometimes give you one last chance to enter the passcode for the device after you wait a certain amount of time, though sometimes it still remains in that iPhone unavailable state. If you don't get this final attempt, then you just have to hit the restore button while the phone isn't recovery mode and then find her/Apple devices, depending on if you're using a Mac or PC respectively, will go through the process of wiping the phone and reinstalling a fresh copy of iOS and then you just have to set it up from scratch/whatever backup you have.