Apple unable to unlock replacement unlocked iPhone 4S

Question

This is especially important to anyone who purchased an unofficial unlocked iPhone 4S in the USA with an AT&T micro-sim rather than the official unlocked iPhone 4S SKU packages (starting on 11/11/11).
On Oct 17th I purchased a 32gb iPhone 4S at an Apple store in North NJ. The phone was purchased at full price and was indeed unlocked. Unfortunately, the microphone crapped out after one day.
Oct 19th I get a replacement that functions perfectly unfortunately the phone was locked to AT&T. Apple tried feverishly to unlock the phone through their engineering department. The phone was listed on it's profile as "unlocked", but the phone was still locked. The consensus was it was an unforseen issue to an unforseen problem that wasn't anticipated so there was no way to resolve it at the moment. The solution was to return the phone and repurchase another.
Oct 21st I return the replacement phone with the box from the original phone. They bring me a new phone, open the box and hand me the phone. The phone was unlocked.
Oct 31st I get home from a trip and to make a long story short, I break the screen on the unlocked phone. I am unable to get a replacement for my iPhone from any Apple store in my area at this time.
Nov 2nd Apple sends me a replacement they assured me would be unlocked.
Nov 3rd I receive a locked replacement from Apple.
Without going in to too much detail; I spoke to every level of advisor, an engineer for several days following the receipt of the locked replacement and they assured me they would be able to unlock this iPhone by placing the serial number into a database which affirms the unlock every time the phone is synced.
Again, I was assured this would solve the issue of activating the unlock. However it was finally determined (on Nov 11th) that something is inherently wrong in the system. The senior advisor I spoke to yesterday said that the issue I am having has already sprung up a handful of times with similar results. His resultion was for me to go to the Apple store (he made the appointment for me and spoke to the manager of the store) and return my phone and purchase a factory unlocked iPhone 4S.

Answer 1

Believe what you want. Maybe it wasn't locked down from the moment of sale, but it was sold as carrier locked to AT&T.
Similarly, news has broken recently that the SIM slots in phones sold on Sprint were unlocked out of the box, but Sprint would be locking them down effective yesteday.
Any phone that came with an AT&T SIM card was not meant to be unlocked. It may have taken some time for Apple/AT&T to pur the serial numbers in the system and get them locked down, but they were never advertised or sold as unlocked. I don't know why Apple would spend so much time on this with you frankly, as unlocked phones did not officially become available to order in the U.S. until yesterday.
Perhaps, now that there is one model of iPhone in the US that for the first time, is available on multiple carriers, They are ALL unlocked on the shelves and are being fed into the database to be locked down at the time of sale. This is the way it has worked in some countries for a while (where there were multiple, supported, GSM carriers).
Either way, you're not going to find much in the way of sympathy here, since Apple did not advertise or market the unlocked iPhone in the US at the time you bought yours.
If you bought your phone on October 17th, then you have 5 more days left to return it for a refund. I sugest you do that and purchase an iPhone that is actually marketed and sold as unlocked instead.