I'd say the "nightmare" continues but that's a little too dramatic for trying to unlock a phone. The annoying inconvenience certainly continues though. Way too much to type, but long story short: following what I did in the previous posts, I decided to use my lunch hour to head to an AT&T store. I explained my situation and they had me call customer care from the store, though I explained to them that I already did that. They could tell I was pretty ticked off but I remained as polite as possible, knowing it's not the fault of the associates in the store. The customer care rep said "we'll get this resolved in this phone call sir," though I knew not to get my hopes up considering it's AT&T.
After a lengthy conversation and wait, the rep told me I have to call the GoPhone department. What? But I don't use GoPhone. "But they're the ones that handle this sir." I knew I was being fed bull****. Called GoPhone (still in the AT&T store), and of course I couldn't get through to a human. It took me through the same enter your phone number or dial 611 loop. Told the store associate what happened and that I can't get through to GoPhone. He said "just press 0 all the way through" in a bit of a smartass tone. I told him I tried that, it doesn't work. So he dials himself and noticed that it doesn't work and gives me an "oh.."
After several more phone calls by the store associate it turns out, of course, that GoPhone has nothing to do with my situation. The only solution I was given once again was to try again online. The associate said the problem is that I'm not an AT&T customer. I said then what do you call someone that buys an AT&T phone? And uses a carrier AT&T lent its network to and allows to use its locked phones? I told him I had no problem unlocking AT&T phones I payed for in full in the past. We submitted another request online from the store. Five minutes later it was rejected because not enough time had passed since my last request to unlock the phone.
To say I'll never do business again with AT&T is obvious, but my choices now are to just sell the phone locked and forget about it, or hold onto it and pursue a lawsuit (which AT&T certainly is no stranger to). I certainly don't appreciate being extorted, and at this point it's about the principle for me. I'm going to post to a few other forums as well, 1) to gauge opinion and 2) to help make sure as many people as possible know exactly what happened and avoid having the same done to them.