Unlocking My Tracfone

Jordan2 · ‎03-16-2010

I bought a Tracfone from HSN and am now coming to my end of service date (11/20/22). I want to unlock my phone so I can shop around for another cellphone provider. I'm not sure how to go about this, I'm also wondering if Tracfone makes it difficult to unlock your phone. If you unlock your phone could you still use Tracfone plans if you choose to? If I buy a plan for just a month till I decide what to do, do I have to wait till the month end of service date to leave or can I leave a week or two into the plan if I want? I don't use my phone much but I don't think Tracfone plans are that affordable, I have seen better plans elsewhere.

gardenman · ‎03-09-2010

It's a pretty easy procedure these days. If you have an Apple phone from Tracfone and you bought it before 11/23/2021, then it will unlock automatically after one full year of service. If you bought one after that date, it will unlock automatically after 60 days of service.

If you have an Android phone, the same dates apply. If bought before 11/23/2021 then it needs to have been in service for twelve months. If bought after 11/23/2021 then it would have to have been in service for over sixty days.

You'll need to call Tracfone to request an unlocking code. They will then verify that your phone meets the conditions and will give you a ten to fifteen-digit unlocking code. Have a pen and paper handy. Then you'll shut down the phone, remove the old SIM card and replace it with the SIM card of your new provider. Then when you restart the phone, the phone will tell you it needs a code to unlock the phone to use the new SIM card. That's the code that Tracfone gave you. Enter that code and you should be good to go.

If you unlock the phone and wish to go back to Tracfone, you can, but you'll have to get the phone reactivated through Tracfone and reinstall the Tracfone SIM card and unlock it from whatever new carrier you'd picked up. (Assuming they'd locked it and they probably did.)

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