On January 20th, I paid $5.99 to FreeUnlocks.com to unlock my BlackBerry Bold 9930 smartphone. Within a few minutes I received an email from *******@freeunlocks.com containing several unlock codes. However, none of them worked. That is, FreeUnlocks.com was unable to unlock my phone.

At that point, I worked with one of their support agents (Marika) to try to manually unlock my phone. After several attempts of unsuccessful troubleshooting the results were still the same, ineffective. As a final escalation of support, I received an email from a Senior CS Rep (Dani Carlo), which stated "…the unlock code for IMEI # **** could not be located…" Reading that email I quickly learned that the rep entered the wrong IMEI # on his end. Wrong IMEI # equals wrong unlock codes. At that point, I gave up.

Since I would soon be traveling overseas and needed a quick solution, I paid $2.49 to a reputable company (FreeMyBlackBerry.com) and they were able to unlock my phone in less than 3 minutes by providing just one working unlock code (instead of several non-working codes from FreeUnlocks.com).

On January 22nd, I requested a full refund. To date, there have been yet another several unnecessary email exchanges between myself and Marika who insisted I shoot a video demonstrating their codes indeed do not work. Basically, she wanted video proof showing the IMEI # of my phone and me typing their non-working codes in my phone. This was a waste of my time. I pointed out that their codes contain way too many digits (16 to be exact); while the working code I received from FreeMyBlackBerry.com were just 8 digits.

Marika was adamant about the video and kept referring me to their Terms & Conditions. I stated their Terms & Conditions don't apply in this case since their support agent entered a different IMEI # than what I provided at the time of order. I then emailed 3 different photos showing the IMEI # on different menu screens of my phone as well as the manufacturer sticker under the battery. Basically, I proved to them the IMEI # which I provided at the time of order did not match the IMEI # I received from Dani Carlo. Needless to say, Marika did not want to admit the error was on their end and kept hiding behind their Terms & Conditions.

This is ridiculous. People shouldn't have to go through the hassle of shooting an unnecessary video where evidence is concrete.