Do roaming carriers lock PINs?

[Atsen]

Hey guys, new here and hoping someone can shed some light on a little issue i'm having with a new 9360 BB...

Basically bought it unlocked for a friend (who lives in Barbados) while she was in the US. When she got it she placed her Barbados SIM (from her Nokia phone) into the BB, and it worked fine for calls and texting via roaming. But now that she's back in Barbados she can't activate her BIS service because her local carrier says the PIN is locked!

We chatted with the original seller who confirmed the phone was fully unlocked (it was not even carrier branded) so my line of thinking is wondering if the roaming carrier-partner (and there are several including T-Mobile and AT&T) in the US locked the PIN of the phone when she used it there for the first time? Is this possible as an automatic process, or does the user have to manually activate their PIN to a carrier?

Any help or suggestions or anything would be helpful at this point, or it's simply an expensive paperweight!

[auditman]

they don't need to lock pins for bis. Maybe it's locked to bes.

[romeo57]

I've experienced this many times before. Yes, they do lock pins, most of the carriers, mostly on OS 6 and up. My BB been locked many times with Telkomsel (Indonesian telco) when i want to use back in my country, Malaysia. The only thing u can do is call the carrier you previously use and ask them to release your pin, before you leave the country. Or else, ask your current carrier to ask RIM to release the pin, though that's the last resort.

Hope this helps.

[Atsen]

Hmm, i'm not sure about the BES bit, thought that would have been associated with some sort of business deal or corporate account?

I'll do some investigation into what partner-carriers she used in the US so i can ask our local Barbados carrier (LIME) to request a PIN release.

Is it really possible to get RIM to release it though? I thought they would just say that it's up to the carrier? And from checking their site before, the only way i see to contact them is via Twitter (which i do use, but not for a help request).

If anyone else has any expertise on this topic, please feel free to add something else; more suggestions are always welcome in case my requests to the carrier(s)/RIM are ignored

[Atsen]

UPDATE: Well i thought i found the right carrier, then nearly bit my tongue off when i realised it wasn't them and that i'd be forever doomed. But my friend came back from a UK trip and said her temp O2 BB SIM worked *perfectly*. So perfect that when we tested it here it picked up our local carrier like a breeze...

Turns out that our current local carrier SIMs are like 4-5 years old and the newer SIMs register the network under its new name and so on, so first thing in the morning i'm going to get like 4 new SIMs for me and the people i know who'll have issues with this later... at leats, i hope this resolves the issue!

Thanks again for the help though, cheers