Blackberry pins and phone providers in Colombia

Recently several persons in my company started getting Blackberries as their own personal phones and with this change came the necessary crash course to be able to help them with setting up all their stuff as I had never had the experience of working with any BB, I'm not going to talk about features or anything about the phones themselves, I'm sure there is plenty of information about it somewhere else and when I get my hand on one for myself I might rant a little about my personal experience.

Now these phones all came from the united states (I'm currently located in Colombia) and were bought used, so all of them came tied to a specific phone provider, some from T-mobile and some from AT&T, the first one was a BB pearl form T-mobile, the phone was locked for use with T-mobile only and a quick search on the web popped up the information I needed to unlock it for free: The original phone provider can give you the activation code.

With this information in hand I called T-mobile, they have a spanish speaking option so went there to save me some trouble but after half an hour or so of waiting and being bounced they had no idea what I was talking about and eventually someone hung up on me (or the call was dropped), I decided to try the english speaking section so did that and the person who talked to me was aware of what had to be done, so my tip number 2: Always try to speak with the native speakers if it's the company is in the US then English if it's in France then French you get the idea, I've found that non native languages usually get lesser access or training and this doesn't come from just T-mobile but other companies as well however if you don't speak the language try with the language you speak you might get lucky.

However this person told me that they couldn't unlock the phone unless I had an account with them, something that seemed totally bogus at the time but given that I was already tired of waiting and repeating myself, the fact I really don't like to get mad at customer service people (most of the time they really do try to help you), I was asking for a favor and that this was my first time in this position I let it go and went to option number 2: There are several sellers that can give you the activation codes.

A search on google turned up several people offering to do this for all sorts of fees, I went to ebay and after searching I bought the code from a person who seemed to have a pretty good record and went for $30 (seeing as some were asking for $80 it seemed like a good deal), now there were some going for a lower price but didn't have as good rep. After couple of hours I got the code, unlocked the phone and was able to use it on Tigo and Movistar without a hitch... or so I tought.

It turns out the phone wasn't able to send or receive SMS, after calling Movistar for help regarding this issue after a couple hours bouncing back and fort and picking at the services books and SMS settings, rebooting several times and removing the battery and SIM (I was specially annoyed about this, but turns out it's standard procedure like rebooting a computer so settings kick in) I could send but not receive messages and there they claimed to be unable to help me further as the phone was defective and was not purchased with Movistar, refusing to take this answer decided to start from zero and wiped the handheld completely resetting it to factory defaults and Lo and behold it all worked perfectly I was proud with myself :D here then comes my fourth advice: When you get a used BB always start by wiping it before attempting anything else.

Later on came a couple BB curve also from E-bay and locked, I repeated the process to unlock them and they worked normally, however their users decided to buy unlimited data plans so I now had to set this up, after buying the service from Movistar I got the service books and settings pushed to the phones, they were now able to surf the web so I went to set up email, and here comes the tricky part, searched how to to this and came up with the URL http://movistar.co.blackberry.com/ (notice how movistar is a subdomain for blackberry.com) it asks for PIN and IMEI info, this is on the back the phones so no problem there but an error message came up, it seems the phones were registered with another operator, a call to Movistar confirmed this they were registered to T-mobile and AT&T and could not be used until the operator released the PINs.

Once again had to call to T-mobile, I wasn't thrilled about this remembering the last time they refused to help me, surprisingly after calling customer service they transferred me to Blackberry support (wow there was a BB support I wasn't told this last time) and I explained to the tech rep my situation he asked me if I needed the phone unlocked, I was shocked that he offered this but he said he could do it if need, however I had already unlocked the phones and just needed the PIN released from their database so I could use the Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) with Movistar the rep was happy to do this and I was able to set up email, this bring us to my last tip: Don't waste your time with customer service, ask to be transferred to BB support there is always such area trust me and these guys are the ones that know just what to do, the situation repeated itself with AT&T and now everyone was setup and loving their new toys.

Hope this helps you whenever you find yourself in a similar situation.