Phone SIM error - anyone help?

[crumbworks]

Here we have a Bell Samsung Galaxy S3 (Canada). My brother only used it for a few weeks, before his work gave him a brand new HTC One.

 

My mom is with Rogers (corporate plan w/ employer) and she's wanted a new phone, so I paid to have it carrier unlocked, got her a micro-SIM, and she now has her first smartphone. Unlocking worked fine (used a website, no issues) and after registering SIM, it worked right away.

 

It worked great from about 7pm Thurs until about 11am today, when it switched to saying "Emergency calls only" rather than "Rogers. I powered it off and pulled out the SIM, it correctly said "no SIM found". Re-inserted it -- said the same "Emergency calls only".

 

We called Rogers, reached Business Tech Support. He refreshed network, same message.

 

So he said it may be a bad SIM (which happens) and he credited us the cost of a SIM card, and advised to go a Rogers store and buy a new one. We did, swapped it online (they couldn't in store -- no access to corp accounts), and now it said "Unregistered SIM"

 

Waited 2+ hours in case there was simply a switch delay, then called back. This girl at tech support said the SIM swap may have been stalled, did all the usual 'network refresh stuff'. Same thing: "Unregistered SIM".

 

She said the usual speech: "it's an unlocked phone, we can't predict how it will behave on our network" (which is BS, but I digress)

 

She advised we visit the store again, to see if they could either:

1) try an active SIM they have lying around (like, for testing purposes) in this phone

or

2) put our existing SIM card into another phone to see if that works

 

They couldn't do EITHER. They don't carry tester phones or active test SIMs. It's the only Rogers store in town, too.

 

I've done all the usual (power cycle, battery pull, SIM out and back in, replace the SIM, network refresh on Rogers end, etc)

 

Anyone have other suggestions?