So you have never gone the waiting period route but dispute my account
No, I haven’t. It’s just contrary to my experiences with Apple. I actually don’t doubt your account. I’ve heard similar inexplicable stories before. Sometimes, there’s no explanation why Apple does what it does.
I had one client I went with to Apple who had a four year old laptop that was having severe intermittent problems. . . They took her laptop into the back and after about 45 minutes came back and said they could not figure out what was wrong with it. The manager came over and said the only To solve her problem was to replace it. She said she couldn’t afford that (at the time a replacement was ~$2500). He said, “No, you misunderstand, we are going to give you a new one. It will take a while to transfer your data. We just need your permission to do that”
Sure enough, about 40 minutes later he came out with a brand new, state of the art Mac laptop, and handed it to her. No charge. He said, “We are keeping your old one and sending it to Apple for them to try and figure out why it’s doing what it’s doing. All your data is on this new computer and we’ve erased it off your old drive.” He showed her that was true. Her original had been out of warranty for two years.
For you, all I can imagine is something raised a red flag for Apple that showed something suspicious was going on and maybe you weren’t you. Otherwise I can’t imagine why the number of hoops you had to jump through to get your phone unlocked.