Unlocking phones, best way?

[desura]

What is the best way to unlock phones? I don't think the carrier will unlock the phone I have, so I'm thinking of using one of those websites which promise to unlock phones. I've never used one before. Are they legit?

 

[isekii]

what phone?

 

[JeffMD]

Generally if a phone can be unlocked, you can unlock it. For instance if you have a contract phone where you have paid off the phone, as long as it is a phone capable of multi carrier frequencies (some low cost phones are simply created for one carrier type) than you can just call up and have it unlocked. As far as prepaid phones, some like cricket and tmobile come unlocked from the start, while others like virgin mobile, boost, and sprint prepaid can be unlocked after 6 months to a year on an active account (one exception, a number of boost and VM phones can be used on OTHER Sprint based MVNO services without being unlocked).

The days of needing a third party to unlock things is past, and they never did have the ability to unlock phones that were either a) Still being paid for or blacklisted, or b) locked prepaid phones.