In the final days leading up to my departure for France, I've been feeling a reasonable amount of about-to-leave-on-a-life-changing-journey stress, but in general, things were going pretty smoothly. But then yesterday, two days before my flight, disaster struck.
So, a bit of backstory: I have AT&T as my phone carrier here in the US. Back in August, I saw I was eligible for a free upgrade if I traded in my current phone, so I took advantage of that and upgraded from a Galaxy S10e to a Galaxy S22. I explained to the salesperson that I would be moving to France soon and would need to unlock my phone from the carrier so I could add a French sim card, and they told me that all I would need to do is call 611 and they would unlock it for me. I naively assumed that this would be a simple process; after all, it was just one quick phone call, right? Well, as it turns out, this salesperson left out some significant details. Details that might cost me over $800.
I was a little skeptical when the salesperson told me that my new phone didn't have a physical sim card slot, but I learned that eSims existed so I figured I would be fine. I was right about that much, at least: I purchased a one-week international eSim from Airalo for $4.25, so that I would have coverage for my first week in France while I got settled in and got a French eSim (I was planning on using Free Mobile, since there's a boutique right down the street from my school and a lot of previous assistants strongly recommended it). The Airalo eSim would activate as soon as I entered Europe, but being a tad bit paranoid, I decided to wait until right before I left to install it on the off chance that it would activate here in the US. My flight is scheduled to depart at 11:50 PM on Sunday, so I figured Friday would be a cautious but reasonable time to install it. I had already checked to make sure my new phone was eSim compatible and reviewed how to add an eSim to my specific model, so I assumed it would be quick and easy, just a matter of scanning a QR code and pressing a couple of buttons.
Boy, was I wrong.
I went to Settings, then Connections, then SIM card manager. I clicked "Add mobile plan (Add an eSim mobile plan)" and scanned the QR code provided to me by Airalo. I got a message telling me my phone was still locked to my carrier. I didn't panic yet: I would just call 611 and ask them to unlock it. Even better, I found there was an option to submit an unlock request online! I noticed something that said you could only unlock your phone if it was fully paid off, but I had paid off my previous phone and the new one was a free upgrade, so that shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong. Apparently, I still owed $825. And I would have to pay all of that at once if I wanted to unlock my phone. And even if I paid that huge sum right then and there, I would have to wait another 48 hours to submit a second unlock request, and then another 24 hours after that before I could add an eSims, by which point I would already be in France.
Now I started to panic.
I immediately shared my predicament with the WhatsApp TAPIF assistants group chat. One person told me that they encountered the same problem last year, but they talked to customer service and asked for an exception, and they unlocked their phone the next day without them needing to pay a dime. Awesome! Feeling reassured, I called AT&T customer service and explained the situation. The panic settled right back in when they told me that they only make exceptions for military deployments. I updated the WhatsApp chat, and the person who'd suggested calling customer service said they were initially also told that they only make military exceptions, but they just kept calling and chatting online until they found an agent that was willing to unlock it for them. The thing is, this person has Verizon. Another person then chimed in and said that they also had the same problem in the past, but they ended up paying off their phone for $600. A third person said they also have AT&T and that they would not budge on the subject. Great!
I was ready to throw in the towel, pay $825, and pinch pennies (euros?) for the next seven months, but my mom was more persistent. While we ran around doing last-minute errands and packing, my mom spoke with no less than three AT&T agents, going full Karen on them all (my mom is a wonderful, compassionate lady, but she can make any manager want to quit their job). Just like WhatsApp Person #3 warned, however, none of them budged whatsoever.
Finally, after several hours of frustration, my mom got ahold of someone in the Customer Loyalty Department. This lady couldn't help unlock the phone either—AT&T is seriously stubborn on that end—but she did at least give us some information that talked me off the ledge. She told us point blank to never go into an AT&T store, because all they care about is making a commission, so they will lie and manipulate you at any turn. In fact, she said, employees in all AT&T departments except Customer Loyalty are trained to care about sales first, and customers second (if at all). She admitted that the salesperson who sold me my phone 100% ripped me off by telling me the upgrade was free and that all I would have to do to unlock my phone is call 611. In the salesperson's defense, they probably genuinely didn't know that I would have to pay off my phone in full to unlock it, but they totally knew what they were doing when they lied about the upgrade being free. Awesome. The Customer Loyalty woman walked us through AT&T's international plan, and explained it much more clearly than the website does. It certainly isn't cheap, but 7 months of the international plan would still end up costing less than the $825 I would need to pay upfront to unlock my phone and use eSims.
In the end, after a long day of feeling doomed (I'm honestly impressed that I didn't cry), I came to the conclusion that the cheapest, and therefore probably the best, option would be to just buy a whole new phone while I'm in France and set it up with a French carrier (the WhatsApp group said I can get a new Android or Motorola in France for about $200), and just use my current phone with the AT&T international plan for my first few days abroad. It would admittedly be much easier and more convenient to use my current phone with the international plan for the entire duration of TAPIF, but according to my math (and I confess I am by no means a mathematician), that would end up costing me about $300 more than getting a second phone in France. Is convenience really worth $300? I'm inclined to say no, of course not... but that's going to depend on how complicated setting up a phone in France will be.
I am absolutely not a go-with-the-flow kind of person—on the contrary, I like to plan things as many months in advance as possible—but for the moment, I'm just going to have to use AT&T's international plan for the first few days of TAPIF, and figure out my next steps from there.
RIP to the $4.25 Airalo eSim that I won't be able to use.
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