The Unlock Pros will waste your time and leave your phone unusable Internet

I'm going to provide my own rebuttal to a certain extent.  I want to be as fair as possible.

I've spoken to a couple of reputable repair guys while trying to get my phones repaired that have said that what theunlockpros.com did was sketchy and illegal and voids the warranty, however they did say it would probably have worked on other carriers.

Having said that, I have the following negative things to say about this company:

• They say that their service will not void your warranty, however the phone is left rooted and with a different IMEI
• They claim that their service is a "direct factory unlock" service, which is not true
• They claim that you have online support until you confirm that your phone is unlocked, however they quickly ignored me as soon as I let them know that my phones no longer worked.
• They never told me that their unlocking service will make the phone unusable on MetroPCS.  At the time of writing, their site also doesn't say this anywhere that I can find.
• When they told me they couldn't help me, they basically told me to never contact them again and that they were blocking me from contacting them.  I hadn't been unreasonable, however I was trying pretty hard to get in touch with them as I was staring at $1400 paperweights.

In fairness, though, here are the positive things I can say.

• The initial service was very fast
• They did refund me, however a $30 refund doesn't really stack up against the damage caused to the phones
• When I did get in touch with them on the phone they offered to allow me to mail the phones to them and they said they would restore the original IMEIs.  This was after they told me that I was never to contact them again, though, so I decided it is far too risky to send these phones in.

I hope this has all been fair enough.  Unlocking, even for legitimate purposes, is a sketchy and either illegal or quasi-legal game.  Metro PCS customer support had recommended that I find a 3rd party unlocking service as they could not unlock during the first 90 days after purchasing the phone and I had only had them for 3 weeks.  I wish I had been more educated going into this, though, and spoken to some local shops first.

I am working with a reputable Samsung repair shop who is trying to restore the phones through Samsung.  It is not cheap and I hope it works.  If I am fortunate, I will only end up being out $50 or so per phone.  

As for the other rebuttal offered by somebody with no stake in this issue, I appreciate the harsh words directed at me in as much as they may help somebody else avoid this experience. 

 Due to the DMCA ONLY the carriers can unlock your phone. It IS a scam and YES you were scammed AND had your IMEI stolen. YOUR phones are useless. If YOU wanted to use the phones abroad you SHOULD have contacted the carrier, but since you did not then odds are YOU are trying to use these now bricked phones on a DIFFERENT network. Which is what the DMCA kinda protects against. The phones are useless and YOU have learned a VERY valuable lesson. DONT TRY AND BACKDOOR!!!! It ALWAYS ends badly.