I have two Samsung Galaxy A50 phones. They were both purchased on time from Walmart in December 2019 and activated on the Verizon network. I paid off both phones in February. In May I purchased two Total Wireless SIM cards from Walmart and attempted to activate them using the Total Wireless website. When that failed I called Total Wireless and we tried for about 5 hours. They said that the SIM card might be bad and they would mail me one and have it set up for my phone. I gave up then and had my Verizon service reactivated until I had more time to deal with it. I did receive the SIM card from Total Wireless a few days later, but had to wait until after I had surgery and my husband had surgery. I finally was ready to try it again Sunday, July 26. I called Total Wireless again and they had me do a lot of things to the phone, but no luck. Then they contacted Verizon and was told that I needed a transfer PIN. So I went to the Verizon Wireless website and got one, gave it to Total Wireless, but it still didn’t work. This went on for about 4 hours.
After work Monday I called Verizon to make sure that our phones had been unlocked and they said they were.
On my day off Tuesday I went to Walmart where we bought the phones (my friend works in the cellphone dept) and she and the other tech helped me from around 4pm to 7:30pm. After being on the phone with Total Wireless for some time, we thought that maybe the phone wasn’t compatible with Total Wireless, so I bought a SIM card and 1 month service with Straight Talk and we put it in my husband’s phone instead, then called to activate it. Once activated they said it might not take effect until 9:30pm. So we then proceeded to work on my phone again. The other tech said let’s take the SIM card out and try it in another phone, so they did and it worked in both an Android and an I-phone, so the SIM card was fine. We did the same thing with Total Wireless SIM card that had previously been purchased for my husband’s phone and, again, it worked fine in the other phones. They called Verizon because they said the only explanation is that the phones were still locked. One technician said that the phones were not set to release until the 5th of the month (which didn’t make sense since the phones were paid off in February and zero was due on the account, which had been closed when we ported the numbers away from Verizon). That technician said she did something to go ahead and release the phones right away. We powered down and back up, but still no network connection. Went home and waited till after 9:30pm, but my husband’s phone with the Straight Talk SIM card still didn’t connect to the network.
On my 2nd day off, Wednesday, I called Verizon again to recheck whether the phones were unlocked since both SIM cards worked in every phone except our two Samsung A50s. They insisted, once again, that the phones are not locked and that neither one of our phone numbers even register in their system any longer. So then I called Samsung and talked with a technician. He had me do network resets, among all of the other things all of the other technicians had me do over the last two days and, when nothing worked, he had me back up everything on my phone to an SD card and then do a factory reset. After completing all of that, I turned the phone back on and it still wouldn’t connect to the network. That’s when he said that I should probably take the phones to a repair center or mail them in since they are still under warranty. He did suggest I call the Straight Talk technical dept to see what they suggest. I did that last night and was on the phone with her for several hours doing all of the same things that have been done for the last three days, to no avail. At 9:30pm she scheduled a call back for this evening at 8pm, which resulted in suggesting that the phones need to go to the service center.
The Samsung repair center is an hour away from our home and we have an appointment next Tuesday, but I would really love to get them fixed before then, if possible.
Any suggestions? I am willing to try just about anything, short of using a hammer (which has been very tempting after spending a total of about 20 hours on the phone with 4 different companies and about 10 technicians).
Thanks and God bless, frustrated female with an irate husband