Overseas military cannot unlock phone

The key here is having the Active Duty Military (ADM) flag on your account. Just having a regular military account/pricing does not qualify you for the military unlocking exceptions. What you need to do is e-mail a copy of your deployment orders to usmilitaryerr@t-mobile.com and request they add the ADM flag to your account. After they do that you will then be eligible for the military unlocking exceptions that bypass the normal requirements. In your specific case, it will get around still having the balance on your phone. Once you have the ADM flag on your account call into customer service and tell them you have the ADM flag on your account which bypasses the normal unlocking requirements and request for your phone to be unlocked. Typically, the customer service agent will need to put in a request to the "offline" team to perform the unlock which requires additional approval by a manager which takes 10-15 minutes. The good news is once they do that the phone is immediately unlocked. Sometimes I've had to restart the phone, but it's immediate. If the customer service agent tells you they're submitting a request and it will be unlocked in 24-48 hours then they're doing it the normal way (not ADM military exception) and it won't work. Usually that occurs when it's after hours offshore customer service agents that don't know what they're doing. In that case, just wait until normal hours when US customer service agents are on and try again. Hopefully this helps and thank you for your service!