Phone unlock for use in UK

[ralphs3]

Hi,

I work in the United Kingdom for a US telecoms equipment supplier who purchased a Galaxy Note 2 at the full retail price. This was then sent to me in the United Kingdom to use in demonstrations of our equipment. Unfortunately the unit they purchased was a Verizon Wireless version which is locked to the Verizon network. If I put a local UK SIM in I can make calls but I can't use data. The reason is that the APN settings are locked to Verizon and can't be edited. I rang VZW customer services to get the phone unlocked but they were not able to do this as I don't have a Verizon SIM card. They also said that the phone should already be completely unlocked as it is a 4G/LTE phone. I checked online and it seems the latest software would probably unlock the phone and allow the APN to be changed but I can't get the phone to update to the latest s/w as I don't have a VZW account or SIM card..!!

My understanding is that because we paid the full retail price for the phone we should be able to get it unlocked immediately. Has anyone managed to unlock a phone just by giving the IMEI code of the phone. I assume that the fact we paid full purchase price for the unit will be recorded somewhere on the Verizon systems.

Ralph