AT&T cannot unlock my Z2 force to allow me to use it elsewhere!

Very long story to follow but basically AT&T either refuses to unlock a phone I paid for outright and was not on their payment plan OR they do not get unlock codes from manufacturers for devices not sold through them. I lean toward the 1st option as I have unlocked non AT&T phones before without issue.

Longer story

I decided to leave AT&T and try T-Mobile as the pricing for 4 phones would save me about 80 bucks a month. I have been with AT&T for over 10 years so this was not an easy decision but the pricing is just getting ridiculous. So I signed up for T-Mobile and moved my phones over 1 by 1. All phones were paid for outright and purchased somewhere else, not at AT&T. Each phone moved over with varying degrees of frustration with the unlock procedure but, eventually, I had 3 working phones on T-Mobile. My phone, the 4th phone, a Motorola Z2 Force, was the problem child.

This Z2 Force phone was purchased outright by me at Best Buy as an "unlocked" AT&T branded phone. It then got replaced by Motorola late in 2018 due to a screen defect, under warranty.

For the past 2 weeks I have been trying unsuccessfully to get AT&T to unlock this last phone on the account and they told me either they are having problems obtaining the code or, the last reply, was that it cannot be unlocked as the "Manufacturer does not have an unlock code for this device".

Next step after trying to get some traction using the AT&T chat (useless, by the way) was to call Motorola and see about them giving me an unlock code. They told me they do not have or give out codes to anyone and that the carrier would need to do it.

So I am now in a loop where Moto says they do not have or give out the codes except to the carriers and my carrier says they do not have the code to allow me to unlock the phone. So the phone is now sitting here useless. This also made me have to go and buy a new phone to use on T-Mobile...650 dollars I wasnt planning to spend.

I would hope that AT&T would reply to this and work to get this resolved as others have had similar success here.

Anyone else experiencing anything similar or have any suggestions? I am going through an online Unlocker service now to see if that will work but it is now past their time to deliver so I suspect they are having issues as well with this phone.

At the end of the day I believe this is an AT&T responsibility that they are not honoring. The phone was never used by anyone but me, has never been part of a monthly payment plan and they should have absolutely no right to keep it locked to their network.

Thanks for listening. AT&T, hopefully you get your act together and stop being so incredibly hard to work with. I may consider going back if the T-Mobile thing doesnt work out, but not if this is how you will treat customers.