Why is unlocking a cell phone more complicated than launching the space shuttle?

Why do they make it so difficult? Because they can. It's counter-productive, of course, because all it does is make you resentful. I just went through this with T-Mobile. I moved to New Zealand from the U.S. We don't have T-Mobile here, but I like my crappy, old phone, so I wrote them to get the unlock code. It took a couple of weeks and a little persistence on my part, but they finally relented. I was tempted to use an unlock code from the Intertubes, but I'm kind of glad I got the "official" code. Life is good now.

Thanks, segdeha. I've called AT&T; customer service twice and visited a corporate owned store today. The story today is that they cannot provide an unlock code because it is no longer and active phone. They can still see it in my account history, but claim they can't issue a code on an inactive phone. Sounds like complete BS to me. Bastiches.

That is crap. The unlock codes come from the manufacturer, in your case Motorola. The truth is that they aren't willing to spend support dollars contacting Moto for your code. If you raise a stink you can probably get the unlock code, but it's up to you whether that's worth the effort. You could try a code off the Intertrucks?