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Overseas woes, can't activate

T

tfitzsimons

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 10, 2008
50
11
Hello all,

I have an iPhone 4S which I bought for full price a few months ago.

As I have moved to Lebanon and am paying $10/mo to have my account suspended, I called AT&T to get an unlock, and they said it would take 48 hours. Then they said 5 days, then they said 8. So I decided to do a restore as advised by others on this site.

I reactivated my service before doing this restore because it was not working.

So, SIM activated by AT&T, I attempt to restore. My iPhone gives me the "The SIM card inserted in this iPhone does not appear to be supported," message, but I can see that it is getting some signal from the local GSM carrier.

This is driving me nuts, and it's exactly like the error I got the first day I got my iPhone - they had to replace it. Got stuck at the whole "this sim is not supported" thing and couldn't get out.

If the idiot from AT&T bricked my phone because she said there would definitely be no problem restoring while abroad, then I don't know what I am going to do. Hopefully an unlock will fix this but honestly I don't even think I can restore again from this point. There is no option to do so. I suppose I could call and demand they send me a new one...

Anyone have any pointers? I realize it may take a bit of expertise because I am abroad but I'd be very happy to hear any ideas.

Thanks
Tim
 
Yeah, spent another hour on the phone with them and it ended with a manager hanging up on me/transferring m furtively to the general Apple tech support line. What a joke.

I look forward to canceling my account with AT&T as soon as I get my phone unlocked.

Tim
 
Yes, I am under contract, but I have moved overseas, which means since I have moved "outside the service area" I can cancel my AT&T account without paying the early termination fee.

I did not want to cancel my AT&T account, because I will be coming back and forth a couple of times over the next year and I'd like to have a cell phone number when I'm in the US.

But after all this I realize it's not worth the hassle and definitely not worth hundreds of dollars of future business. I'll find some alternate method and go from there. They have been incredibly unprofessional. Strangely, the managers were the worst. One lady I spoke today was very helpful but unable to solve my problem. The manager just said he would "conference in Apple" then hung up after dialing the regular Apple support number. What a d.
 
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