Locked iPhone

[Anonymous]

I bought my iPhone 6S from PC World in June, and the sales assistant told me I can put any SIM card in if I want, and I put my Giffgaff card in it. However, Your company locked my iPhone. When this summer holiday, I came back to China, and I found that I could not put any SIM card in my iPhone, and then I knew that my iPhone was locked by your company. This device is not the contract phone, and it should not be locked by you. And now I am going to come back China for X-mas holiday. And I want you to unlock my phone.

[Bambino]

@Anonymous  This is a customer to customer forum. This is not customer service, and this is not GiffGaff. Although GiffGaff uses the O2 network it is a seperate company. You need to contact them, not O2.

https://community.giffgaff.com/t5/tkb/communitypage

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your help.

[MI5 · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately this is Apple policy and has nothing to do with networks.
You correctly assume o2 need to unlock it now and the ways to do it are listed here
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Other-Products-and-Services/Unlocking-an-O2-phone-to-use-a-different-S...

[Bambino]

I'm a bit confused @MI5, and I didn't intend to give the OP the wrong information, but is the OP's phone considered to be an O2 phone even though they're using a GiffGaff sim? Can they now just put an O2 Pay & Go sim in and unlock the phone?

[MI5]

Yes to both questions.
Giffgaff can neither lock nor unlock phones, it's all down to o2.

[Bambino]

Okay. My bad then. @Anonymous, please follow the link provided by @MI5 above to get your phone unlocked.

[MI5]

Will have to wait until back in the UK though to use the phone with an O2 PAYG sim and register the handset on the network.

[Bambino]

If I understood the OP's first post, I think they're in the UK now but planning to go back to China for Christmas. If that's correct they should be able to get the phone unlocked now.

[MI5]

Yes, if they are in the UK now an O2 PAYG sim on the classic PAYG tariff and a £20 top up will be required.
Use £5 for calls to register phone on system leaving £15 for the unlocking fee.