So will o2 unlock under ANY circumstances?

Ok, you are right, I will ignore the fact that Apple specifically told me it was not locked and therefore they breached the trades description act and just throw it in the bin, "Plonk" there you are in the bin!

I've spoken to o2 this morning and they confirmed that they have no intention of unlocking the iPhone at this stage. In a conversation which was otherwise quite informal, the advisor almost read out the last part from a script.

I think your only recourse at this stage would be to complain to the Apple Store from whence the iPhone was purchased; tell them that you were misinformed by the concierge. Good luck.

If you were refering to my post: Thank you for your concern. An Apple manager is working on the problem, O2 customer services refused to put her through to an O2 manger (a very strange way of doing business, I thought) And I have written both to the complaints side of O2 and to Apple's head office. I'll just wait and see what happens......

Here's where I get stuck. Italy sells unlocked phones so why did you buy a UK phone?

An Apple rep would not tell you the phone is unlocked. I believe you misunderstood what you were told.

The other option of course is to go down the naughty jailbreak path to unlock the phone, but I don't want to have to do that.

Lol, you want to file a complaint instead of just unlocking it yourself? Dude!!

When they system is designed to abuse customers, protect yourself by working around it. Just unlock your phone and have a nice trip back home.

Couldn't see a reference to this here, but this comment from 02 boss sounds interesting
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article 6886886.ece

I live 160 miles from the nearest Apple store here in italy, (was not aware that I could buy one of the website) and every now and then go back to London for a weekend. I asked once while in the London Store in August if it was locked and the reply was No it's not. And when purchasing it said the following to the assistant, a girl this time: "is the phone locked in any way? can I change the SIM card?" She replyed NO and even showed me how to change the SIM!
So I am sorry to tell you this but I was told twice by two different "Apple reps" that the pay as you go version is not locked.

If I missunderstood I don't know how?? If she would have said "the phone is SIM locked to the O2 network and if you change the SIM it will not work" I would never have purchased it there!

As you quite rightly said they are sold here NOT locked and as the price there for a pay as you go is about the same price as here I had no obvious reason to think that it was SIM locked. Unlike the version they sell with a contract which I believe is considerably cheaper, subsidised by the carrier, and therefore they SIM lock to make the money back that you save.

The other issue is even if I had stopped and read their "Terms and Conditions" (which were not shown to me before the purchase in any way and I think that if you are entering into some sort of contract to use a provider you should have to sign something to say that you understand this and agree to it) I would have been none the wiser as it says, and I quote:

+13.3 Within the United Kingdom, the Equipment may be restricted to use on the O2 Network. If you attempt to unlock the Equipment in a manner which is not specifically authorised by us, the Equipment may become permanently unusable (fully or in part)+

These Terms and Conditions are very different from the Terms and conditions for the "Contract" version and so I would have understood that outside the UK it is not locked!

Well, this whole discussion is now resolved, as O2 have done exactly as I wanted - more, in fact...

As of today (10th November 2009), the day the iPhone becomes available on a 2nd UK network (Orange), O2 have announced they will officially unlock their iPhones.

The news is better than I had expected too.

For contract users, O2 will unlock the iPhone for free at anytime, even if you are still within the minimum contract period. You will, of course, still have to keep paying the contract until it expires, but you are free to use any SIM in it.

For Pay-As-You-Go users, O2 will unlock the iPhone for a fee of £15 after you have been with them for 12 months (presumably to allow O2 to re-coup the PAYG handset subsidy).

More info and online unlock form here: http://www.o2.co.uk/unlockmyiphone/

Sounds like good news for everyone!!