Verizon Refused To Unlock Man's iPhone, So He Sued the Carrier and Won (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0180391503
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/15/190217/verizon-refused-to-unlock-mans-iphone-so-he-sued-the-carrier-and-won
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/verizon-refused-to-unlock-mans-iphone-so-he-sued-the-carrier-and-won/
Patrick Roach bought a discounted iPhone 16e from Verizon's Straight Talk brand in February 2025, intending to pay for one month of service before switching the device to US Mobile. Under FCC rules dating back to a 2019 waiver, Verizon must unlock phones 60 days after activation on its network. Verizon refused to unlock the phone, citing a new policy implemented on April 1, 2025 requiring "60 days of paid active service."
Roach had purchased his device over a month before that policy took effect. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Henry ruled in October 2025 that applying the changed terms to Roach's earlier purchase violated the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. The court ordered Verizon to refund Roach's $410.40 purchase price plus court costs. Roach had previously rejected a $600 settlement offer because it would have required him to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He estimated spending about 20 hours on the lawsuit but said "it wasn't about" the money.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/verizon-refused-to-unlock-mans-iphone-so-he-sued-the-carrier-and-won/
Even simpler solution (Score:3)
SIM-locking should be banned, period. Works well in many other countries. There is no valid reason to SIM-lock a phone, even for 60 days or 60 days of active paid service. It's a net loss to society as a whole. Even though I understand it can benefit Verizon in one case, it also prevented someone else to switch to Verizon from a competitor.
Re: (Score:3)
I guess it depends. Is the phone "discounted" if you do this? For a while, committing to a yearly plan meant that you got a phone for the price of a phone plan. The alternative is paying for your phone, and just change service anytime.
This sucks however when you are traveling abroad. If your plan doesn't have roaming at your destination, you can't use a local or travel SIM/eSIM. For some people this seems to work fine.
I never owned a sim-locked phone and never will.
Funfact: sim-locking is the standard in Ja
Re: Even simpler solution (Score:2)
You can buy Japanese sim cards on amazon.co.jp which work great. I'm sure some or many of the Japanese telecom companies are rubbish, as most are across the world. However, sim locking in Japan is not required for all carriers.
Re: (Score:2)
> I guess it depends. Is the phone "discounted" if you do this? For a while, committing to a yearly plan meant that you got a phone for the price of a phone plan. The alternative is paying for your phone, and just change service anytime.
There's a third option, and one I've done in the past. Remember, the contract is for a term defined plan. The phone is part of the offer to get you in the contract. It's possible he wanted the phone to put on another service and he would have used a different phone on Veriz
Re: (Score:1)
For the "discounted phone" situation, we have a carrier here that, instead of giving you a phone for cheap and locking you in (which is illegal here now) or having to incur operational fees chasing you if you don't pay your "balance" when you cut your contract early, they have you pay for the phone as if a BYOD, but gives you a discount on monthly bill, often up to 75%. That way, if you just dump them, they didn't lose money on your phone since they had you pay for it; you do have to pay a lot out-of-pocket
Re: (Score:2)
> you do have to pay a lot out-of-pocket up-front however so people on a tight budget might not be able to get high-end phone (in a sense, maybe they shouldn't either ...).
That's kind of the crux of the issue here, since the USA has normalized that everyone needs the latest iPhone and must upgrade it every year or two. This sort of subsidy plans, carrier-sponsored trade-in offers ("Get the latest iPhone FREE! Just sign a new 3 year service contract..."), advertising and, at least on the part of some vendors, short software update windows, feed into this.
There was [1]this article [cnbc.com] not too long ago, in which the economic ruling class is complaining that people are keeping their o
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/23/how-device-hoarding-by-americans-is-costing-economy.html
Re: (Score:2)
> I guess it depends. Is the phone "discounted" if you do this? For a while, committing to a yearly plan meant that you got a phone for the price of a phone plan. The alternative is paying for your phone, and just change service anytime.
There is another alternative.
Sell the unlocked phone with a discount, but only if the subscriber signs a contract that says that if you terminate it within a year (or however long), you'll have to pay early-termination fee to the amount of the discount.
Does it matter if the subscriber uses the phone with a different network? He's still paying you.
Re: (Score:2)
> SIM-locking should be banned, period. Works well in many other countries. There is no valid reason to SIM-lock a phone, even for 60 days or 60 days of active paid service. It's a net loss to society as a whole. Even though I understand it can benefit Verizon in one case, it also prevented someone else to switch to Verizon from a competitor.
I think people in other countries generally buy their phones outright, rather than via provider payment plans, often at a discount, like in the U.S. and I think SIM locking is to prevent people from switching providers before those phones are paid off - and so the providers don't have to sue to recoup that money. That's probably reasonable, but doing it to just make it harder for people to switch is not. Of course, most phones smartphones probably aren't paid off after 60 days, unless providers have anot
Re: (Score:2)
> There is no valid reason to SIM-lock a phone
Carriers can offer subsidised hardware without customers abusing it to get a cheap phone and use elsewhere. Those deals will get more expensive if you ban SIM locking.
Re: (Score:2)
> SIM-locking should be banned, period.
That actually was a stipulation Verizon agreed to when they licensed the 700MHz "C Block" LTE spectrum. Then, [1]sometime around 9 years ago, they just started locking their phones anyway. [youtube.com] Political leadership changes at the FCC probably had something to do with it.
The carriers' argument is that they want to be able to offer subsidized prepaid phones, and without the SIM locking they'd up with people buying phones to use on competing services (though you'd figure that'd probably end up being a wash, with the
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrdZhFXHfwM
Re: (Score:2)
Sim locking makes sense as long as there in is Phone deal such as they give you a $1200 phone for "free" as long as you promise to pay their inflated service pricing for 3 years. However if a phone is bought from a clear. Or if that term has expired, yet a locked phone should be illegal. I most places it is.
in this instance Verizon shot itself in the foot. Realized it and tried to force someone into new terms.
Not much of a victory (Score:3)
According to the story, he still had to pay for a second month of service before the phone was unlocked.
Still, keeping people informed about the sleazy tactics used by just about every large corporation out there is a good thing, so kudos to Mr. Roach.
Re: (Score:2)
He literally said: "it wasn't about" the money
I'm altering the deal. (Score:2)
Pray I don't alter it futher
"But 60 days after Roach activated his phone, Verizon refused to unlock it. Verizon claimed it didn’t have to because of a recent policy change in which Verizon decided to only unlock devices after “60 days of paid active service.” Roach had only paid for one month of service on the phone."
This is the problem with "Contracts of adhesion". They're contracts written on flypaper, and one side gets to make changes and the other side is told to "take it or leave it"
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah when I added a device to my plan and signed a contract, I guess, they were giving a $10 discount per line for auto pay. That somehow had gone down to $5 since then. Seems like that would be a change of terms of an agreement, though I didn't read the fine print to figure out if that's the case. Either case, very sleazy, and up to me to take my chances with cell service from a discount carrier.
and then... (Score:2)
> one side gets to make changes and the other side is told to "take it or leave it"
and when the other side opts for "leave it", the first side will claim it no longer has any obligations since the contract is now void (read: Verizon would claim it is no longer required to do any unlocks).
Obviously a win-win for Verizon only, thanks to spineless and fucking useless FCC (read story for more on that).
Binding arbitration or small claims court (Score:2)
Those are usually your only two options to pursue a complaint against large American Corporations.
It's going to take a corporate screw-up of very large proportions where several people lose their lives to get the Federal Arbitration Act modified to exclude consumers, and even then it still might not happen. '
Only in America
Surprised Verizon didn't require arbitration (Score:2)
I thought all modern contracts with jokers like this mandated arbitration.
6-7 bucks per hour (Score:2)
$400 / 20 hours or so.
About $6-7 per hour.
Interesting.
410.40 dollars or cents? (Score:2)
410.40 dollars or cents?
Verizon is awful about this (Score:2)
Supposed, the phone is unlocked after 90 days, but it's not, and Verizon refuses to fix it.
I did not think it was worth a lawsuit, but I am glad that somebody did.
Happened to me recently with Boost Mobile (Score:2)
They did some kind of network update that degraded the service to the point of being unusable, were unable to fix it across multiple support calls and when I finally called to port my number and phone to a new carrier as a result, said that since I had only had the phone for a few months instead of the 1.5 years that I actually had been using it for, they refused to unlock it.
Unlike the person in the article, since the phone was very cheap and I needed it fixed immediately, I just bought a new (unlocked) p
NDAs for consumer settlements (Score:2)
Cases like this, make me feel that there should be laws against NDAs in the context of customer settlements.
or you could lie about it (Score:1)
we should probably be punish flagrant attempts at theft more harshly, since the slap-on-the-wrist thing has just been taken as tacit approval for the last fifty years
and i guess they've taken the message to heart since capitalism appears to run entirely on lying and stealing these days
it's like, hey, instead of dealing with this problem, let's just assume people can't do better and just bake the issue into the system so that people stop noticing
now the whole system's retarded
Verizon was dumb (Score:1)
It should've either applied the old policy or offered a complete refund, without any NDA or other strings attached.
Re:Verizon was dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Now everyone can enjoy this precedent. Thank you Kansas man.
Re: (Score:2)
Very few people will benefit, given it's limited to whoever bought an iPhone in a specific month before the policy change took effect. Everyone before that had 2 months of service, everyone after it can't sue.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the ruling is based on Kansas law so is not useful outside of Kansas, and even within Kansas, "precedent" is only applicable to this one court.