OK - well i finally got up enough courage to purchase supposedly an unlocked quad band Motorola V180 on EBAY and i bought a sim card for Europe through EKITS.com. I put in the Sim card - asked for pass code and then it says contact service provider. Ekits says this means the phone is locked - does anyone know the website that can give me the code to unlock it for free? or that can help? Thanks - i know there have been other links but i cannot find the and it is quite frustrating!

See this is how little the fools at ekits know or understand....if it asks for the PIN code, then the sim card has registered and the phone is not locked...if the phone were locked it would not ask for a pin code, it would immediately say unauthorized sim card or something to that effect...

sim cards come with pin codes...3 times you enter the wrong pin code and it locks and you need something called the puk (password unlock key) to be able to enter your own pin code.

To show the phone is unlocked, try to borrow somebody else's sim card (where are you located?) to see if the phone boots up.

If may be worse than you think. "Contact service provider" usually means that someone has entered a wrong unlocking code more than 10 times, which leaves the phone "permanently" blocked. In this case there isn't much you can do "for free". You either need a pro whih a smart-clip hardware or you have to open the phone, do some soldering plus use a software. Anyway there aren't any code calculators for motorola available.

well i guess i shall return the phone and also by your tone have you heard soemthing about ekits? I researched them and they seemed to have good reports! I can return the sim card also if you know something i do not? I cannot believe i am in this position after all my research - i guess i should have just rented a phone again. Any help is as always greatly appreciated! thanks

Sorry, never heared of them. You don't need quadband for Europe. Every year 1 milliion mostly perfectly working dualband phones go to the dustbin in Europe. Many are sold cheaply on ebay.

Logos...

As I understand it, it's not the phone...entering an improper security code for the phone will not cause a problem no matter how many times it happens...

It's more likely the sim card...if you enter a wrong PIN code 3 times, the sim card locks and you have to use the PUK...entering the PUK incorrectly 10x automatically fries the sim card...phones don't usually have pin codes..sim cards have pin codes..phones have security codes.

> improper security code for the phone will not cause a problem
Not really, 10 times a wrong PUK will "permanently" block the phone. On other SIM will be accepted after that. You have to "repair" the blocked phone using the correct software. Which means opening it in many cases.

oops ;-) On other = No other

No logos...puk deals with the sim card...phones do not have pin codes or passwords...they have security codes to change certain settings but entering the wrong security code 100,000 times will not lock the phone...pin codes and puk codes refer to sim cards...since the phone booted up it is not locked or defective...the sim card has a problem...the sim card could be defective...the sim card could have been used and the wrong puk entered 10 times or whatever...at least this is the way it is with nokia phones...I believe it is the same way with Motorola phones....agreed thought that entering the wrong puk 10 times will fry the sim card...betcha that if the op put in another sim card, it would work.

Try it on your Motorola ;-)

Let me take it back a bit, logos...we're simply speaking different languages.

There are many security features built into both phones and sim cards...there is a security code that can be used to change certain settings on some mobile phones...for nokia phones the default security code is 12345...for many SE phones it is 0000 but there is no PUK code and as far as Nokia phones are concerned, you can enter the wrong security code a zillion times and it won't fry the phone...it comes into play for example you can set the security level to such that every time you change the sim card, the security code is required...some people change this security code to suit their own needs.

OTOH when a sim card requires a pin code...for example my German Vodafone DE card required a PIN code which came with the sim card....I usually don't like the pin code as since I am using prepay, the worst that can happen if the phone is lost or stolen is I lose the credit on the phone never a great deal of money...this is not a big deal to me should I lose the phone as I never have more than a few euro on it anyway...it is more of a pain in the whatever to keep entering the pin code everytime I turn on the phone and if I enter the wrong pin 3 times, I need to refind the card and enter the puk code...generally I turn off the pin protection (after I change the pin code to something that is always the same on all my mobile phones)...interestingly enough my German Vodafone DE card will not allow me to remove the pin code requirement.

Now perhaps Motorola phones are different and will lock if the wrong security code is entered but I still tend to think the problem is with the sim card not the phone.

It could be the phone. According to the info I have for my German Vodaphone card, if you enter the wrong unlocking code 10 times, you have to contact the provider to use the phone.I recently unlocked my phone (it had been 2+ years) and when pulled the sim card and turned it on, it asked for an 'unlock code'. This is seperate/different from the PIN/PUK code, which is tied to the card.

Paul