Is It Illegal To Unlock A Phone? How to Legally Get Unlock Codes

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Wondering how to get unlock codes for your iPhone and other mobile device customers legally and with the best service and price?

There are many providers who offer this service through their unlock website and we would like to share our experience after trying many different providers.

The unlock website we’ve used is a company called “Blowfish Unlocks.” To date, our control panel says we’ve unlocked 4,850 phones from these guys.

We mainly unlocked iPhones for our wholesale clients just before we shipped the phones internationally or here in the USA.

The top reasons we recommend Blowfish Unlocks:

Easy to use control panel – Blowfish Unlocks control panel is so simple that it works for wholesale unlocking or B2C repair shops. It shows your balance, how many unlocks are pending with the unlock server and how many are rejected IMEI unlocks.

Is It Illegal To Unlock Phones? BlowFish Unlock Reviews for Legal Phone Unlocking

Submitting Orders is Easy – The different models and carriers that you can unlock are organized, clearly marked and easy to find. Delivery times and prices are prompted after selected and you’re able to enter one IMEI or bulk enter in IMEI numbers for those who have wholesale unlocking needs. What I also like is the “Response e-mail” feature. The account admin gets an e-mail, but you can also select someone else to get an automated e-mail when the unlock is complete or if there is an issue. We usually put our technicians e-mail in this space

Is It Illegal To Unlock Phones? BlowFish Unlock Reviews for Legal Phone Unlocking

Prices – I’ve never really found anyone who could beat their pricing. A few times I’ve asked to have our prices lowered, usually when I saw other competitors dropping theirs. Depending on your volume, you can contact them and negotiate a rate. You need to have some account history to really get them to budge on pricing. Discounts are for individual unlocks by model and carrier – not a flat discount across all unlocks. Sometimes we found other providers specializing in a rare carrier that had better prices, but it wasn’t by much.

Speed of Unlock – The speed was always very fast. For the iPhone 4, 4s and 5 on AT&T, we had unlock confirmation back within a few hours max between 8AM and 7PM EST. A few times we missed their cut offs, so we would e-mail support and they usually squeezed them in for us. The great part is that most other providers up-sell their unlock codes by offering different timeframes to finish the unlock. We always went with the normal standard service and, in most cases, received results in what others charged double or triple for.

Payments – PayPal is your only option. Most people have a PayPal account, so this shouldn’t be a problem. A few times our PP account would be jammed up or not have funds, but we usually left enough credit in our Blowfish Unlock account to cover unlocks for a few days.

Blowfish Unlocks is legal to use as they’re an international company offering service to USA customers. The new regulations are only “enforced” by USA companies who actually submit the unlock. The law update back in February also stated that phones manufactured before Feb 2013 were ok to unlock. Most of our phones were iPhone 4 and 4s at the time, so there was 0% concern about the legality. I will admit that I’m probably due for a refresher since it’s been a few months.

Blowfish Unlocks has some suggestions on limiting liability with your unlock customers via a notice in your repair shop and a waiver that the customer signs before the unlock is submitted.

Overall, I never really had any issues with this company. They were always available when we needed them and their service was fast. Add on the very competitive pricing and I would have to recommend Blowfish Unlocks as the best unlock website on the market today.