Telus SIM card default PIN2

So after being on the phone for over an hour with Telus “tech support”, I finally discovered the default PIN2 for their SIM cards. Not that tech support was any help. The first guy I talked to only had one thing to say to me:

We don’t have it, so it doesn’t exist.

Despite my best efforts, I could not convince him to ask anyone else at Telus, or even admit to me that there was such a thing as a PIN2. After a while he asked me if I would like to try to explain the issue to someone else (which is phone-support-guy for “I’m tired of dealing with you, can I please hand you off to someone else?”) and I said sure, go ahead. Pretty much the same deal with the second guy, but at least he didn’t hang up on me. I almost got the second guy to say that there was a PIN2 but that they didn’t know what it was, but his mantra ended up being “It’s not in the system, so it doesn’t exist.” I asked him if he knew anything that wasn’t “in the system”, at which point he became very quiet. He refused to, or couldn’t, tell me what the weather was like today, so I guess there’s no weather widget in their system… He also had no idea what color his socks were.

Finally, I guess his shift was up, so he asked me if I would like to speak to a third tech support representative, and I said “sure, follow your phone-support-guy training manual and pawn me off on someone else”. I don’t think he said goodbye, but at least he didn’t hang up on me. The third guy I got started off down the same tracks, but I confused him by asking some unrelated hypothetical questions, then BAM! – before he knew it he had admitted that PIN2 codes had existed for years, and it was likely that all SIM cards had them, even though the carrier might not use them. He also confirmed that they were not anywhere “in the system”. I then asked him how things got into “the system” and he said that he couldn’t answer that. I think the people who put stuff “in the system” should stuff themselves “in the system” – if you know what I mean…

But, I digress. The default PIN2 code is 1234. Which I guessed on my third attempt after having tried 0000 and my PUK code as suggested by the activation person I spoke to before calling tech support. I probably would have tried it much sooner if they had agreed to refund the $10 for the SIM card if it got locked, but they wouldn’t, so at least it cost them $10 of their time. My time doesn’t count for this one, since I was loading Debian in a VM to test some Samba stuff while this was going on.

Sorry for making you read all that, but believe me, the price you paid for that bit of information is much, much less than what I paid.

PS: The lady who I talked to for the activation was incredibly friendly and helpful. My complaint here is for the technical support team only, and their unwillingness to even try to find an answer that’s not “in the system”. Boo Telus. 🙁