2 hours ago, Knuckolls said:

" broken phones that are just removed from the carrier so that you cannot get service to them anymore?"

You hit the donkey on the head! long story short i bought a contract for 3 years, iPhone 7 plus, two months into my contract i left my phone on the car roof over night so it was water damaged and i assumed it was broken as it wouldn't power on. Nearly a year has passed and i was going to sell all my old broken phones but i wiped them before i sold them ofc. Realised the iPhone 7 still worked! Problem was i already told the carrier my phone was broke so they sent me a replacement and blocked the old one!  

26 minutes ago, Zappster said:

You need to jailbreak the phone first.

Flashing a new IMEI number just lets you gain access to the SIM card stuff again. It has to be a legit IMEI from the same make + model as your current phone. If you're not interested in getting SIM to work again you can just jailbreak to remove any other restrictions that the block sets in place.

ofc Zappster knows all about how to unlock phones again after they have been blocked