Apple Sued by Consumers Over iPhone Locking Policies

You couldn't....not legally anyway.....there was no way for at&t to provide you with an unlock code because we didn't have one..there was literally nothing in the database...

But the iPhone was literally the ONLY phone we could not unlock, every other phone had an unlock code that we could get, the iPhone ONLY had no code....and if we tried to search for it our database told us that no unlock code existed...

The rules at at&t when I worked there were pretty loose, basically we were allowed to unlock any phone provided we could verify that it wasn't stolen (a simple search on the IMEI could determine that), they were at least 6 months into a contract and the customer had no past due balance....during my time at at&t I unlocked literally hundreds of phones...the only time I ever refused to unlock a phone is if it was reported stolen or the customer was past due...sometimes people would ask for an unlock code for a non at&t phone....I don't think they understood what 'unlocking' a phone means....