With the amount of iPhone Unlock options available on the web, and the proliferation of scam sites appearing, it’s important to make sure that whoever you choose to trust your hard-earned money with is a legitimate provider.
Over the course of the last 9 years unlocking iPhones, I’ve tried most of them, and today, I’m reviewing DoctorUnlock now that iPhoneIMEI.net is no longer in business.
The Methodology
To conduct a thorough review, you can’t just scan through the reviews on other review sites to try and stitch together your own opinion. There are too many people on sites like Fiverr.com offering to write reviews in return for payment and they get a lot of work (most in the form of competitors writing negative reviews, unfortunately).
So, with that in mind, I set out to conduct my own test to see if DoctorUnlock was legitimate or just another scam.
I test all my providers on 6 criteria:
Criteria 1: Range of unlocks
There’s nothing worse than reviewing details of thirty different unlock providers only to find out that the one you’ve settled on doesn’t actually have the ability to unlock your phone. Because of this, the first criteria we test our unlock providers on is their range of unlocks.
Providers with the lowest number score the worst with the providers covering just about every phone carrier from every country getting top marks.
Criteria 2: Price
Finding a reliable unlock provider who can unlock your carrier in your country is great, but not when it’s more expensive than getting a new phone. Because of this, the second criteria we assess providers on is price, with cheaper unlock providers scoring the highest marks.
Criteria 3: Payment methods
Finding a cheap unlock provider who deals with your carrier is great, but not when they won’t accept your payment method. While I understand it’s hard to believe that there are some unlock providers who don’t accept credit cards or PayPal, they do exist. Because of this, the third criteria is payment methods, with providers who allow all standard payment methods receiving the highest marks.
Criteria 4: Customer Service
Finding a cheap unlock provider who accepts your payment method and can unlock your iPhone is great, but not when you have to wait days, or even weeks, to hear back to the simplest of questions, let alone, detailed questions about the progress of your unlock. Because of this, customer service is the fourth criteria we assess unlock providers on.
Providers who have responsive and effective support teams score the highest marks, while waiting weeks to get a response will score poorly.
Criteria 5: Success
Finding an unlock provider who promises the world and responds quickly is great, but if they can’t unlock your iPhone, then they’re a complete waste of time. Because of this, the success of the unlock process is the fifth criteria we judge the providers on.
Providers who’re able to unlock all iPhones from all carriers score the highest marks, with failures reducing their score.
Criteria 6: Speed
Unlocking every iPhone will score a provider high marks, but taking longer than was advertised will reduce their score. People plan their lives around given time frames and it can be very frustrating when their expectations aren’t met.
Providers who deliver results in the given time frames receive the best scores with providers who slip outside their given timeframes will receive lower scores.
The Tests
The other thing you might have seen if you checked out my iPhone 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, X review, you would have seen that I’ve tested DoctorUnlock on a number of different occasions. In fact, when you add the up the tests I’ve conducted on them over the last 5 years, you’ll see that I’ve tested 68 iPhones in that time.
The breakdown of the iPhones we’ve tested is:
iPhone 4/4s – We tested 2 iPhones for iCloud unlocks
iPhone 5, 5s, and 5c – 9 iPhones tested for carrier unlocks and 7 iPhones tested for iCloud unlocks
iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, and 6s Plus – 9 iPhones tested for carrier unlocks and 8 iPhones tested for iCloud unlocks
iPhone 7 and 7 Plus – 12 iPhones tested for carrier unlocks
iPhone 8 – 8 iPhones tested for carrier unlocks
iPhone X, XS Max and XR – 12 iPhones tested for carrier unlocks
The test involved checking website reviews, finding the appropriate unlocks, asking a presale question, purchasing unlocks, asking a question during the process, waiting for the unlock, and then asking another question once the process was complete.
The Results
The iPhone unlocking industry is notoriously unreliable so I wasn’t expecting stellar results from the tests. I was expecting poor customer service, a lack of available unlocks, limited payment options, and slow delivery on the 50% of unlocks I expected to be successful.
I’m happy to report I was pleasantly surprised (you can read the individual test results on the iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 7, 8, X and iCloud unlock pages).
PROs: There were plenty of pros to report for DoctorUnlock.
First and foremost, they completed every iPhone unlock purchased – this included both carrier unlocks and iCloud unlocks. In an industry where no other unlock provider has been able to achieve this feat, this is the single most important reason why you should choose DoctorUnlock.
When you’re the only unlock provider who can unlock every iPhone in an industry where no-one else can, it would be easy to rest on that achievement and deliver sub-standard support and higher prices. These guys haven’t. They’re very reasonably priced and their email support responded in less than 3 hours to every inquiry we sent.
CONs: There’s only one real con with DoctorUnlock.net. Whilst they’ll actually deliver the unlocks you purchase and their prices are great, they don’t have the biggest range of unlocks on the market. They have all the big US, UK, and Canadian carriers and quite a few regional carriers, but if you’re on a smaller carrier in a smaller country, you might need to head somewhere with a larger range, like DoctorUnlock , to get your unlock processed.
Conclusion
I tested iPhoneIMEI on 5 criteria over 5 years with 47 different iPhones covering 6 different models and they’re the only provider I’ve found that’s been able to complete every iPhone unlock I’ve purchased.
Whilst they don’t have the biggest range on the market, they have great prices, solid customer support, and their automated system allows them to deliver results in less time than any other provider.
If you need your iPhone unlocked, you’re in reliable hands with DoctorUnlock.
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