I switched from pre-paid US Cellular to Mint, hoping to save some $ and 'cuz the coverage was spotty (I'm not in USC's area anymore). Put a new SIM card in, activated account and moved phone number over. A few days later I tried calling out, it would ring their phone but then dead air then hung up. Same with incoming calls and voicemail. No problem with text/data. Both WIFI and network notifications are at 100%.

I called Mint three times over the next three days and spent at least 3 hours each time attempting to fix it. I canceled Mint on day 7 for a refund. I'm not sure what to try next. I had a friend of a friend who said maybe I'm blacklisted by US Cellular? I did pop in a trial (#3) Mint Card to keep working on the issue (not activated yet)
Another friend has walked me through to the point of "unlocking bootloader", but I'm kind of freaking out. I can follow the step by steps - but where is this going to? I thought factory reset would scrub any software issue. This is a whole new level - and what is a developer phone? I'm pretty sure that not my model. Any thoughts? Or should I bite the bullet and attempt to "Flash my phone" or give it up and buy a new one (probably Moto G4 Play as I just got a new set of screen savers and covers - so far this one has lasted nearly 3 years.)

 

I've done the reset through "back and reset" and through the recovery mode. Since I've done the recovery 6-7 times I feel a bit of fatique so have only put google login and MinMobile back on the phone. I get email notifications but looks like I no longer get text.

Now I'm just wondering how I can move forward. I'm hoping to recover my phone number to maybe a flip phone? Without my phone I'm being locked out of Microsoft. Will this nightmare stop.