Ready to throw it against a well - Please Help (activation server & Firmware)

howsshecuttin

Hi,
So last week I got my screen changed on my 5s. When I got home I shortly noticed that I was getting no texts or phone calls, On the top of the phone where it should say 3G, It just continued to say searching..
So today I went into an electronics shop and he said that the reason for this is because my phone had gone into a VPN mode and the only way to get it off of it is to factory restore it.
I backed up all my bits onto cloud and itunes and I restored it thinking that all my problems have gone away.
They were only getting started!!!
So I turned the phone back on and it would not activate. 'Activation Server is Unavailable'.. I then googled how to fix this and I tried to restore it through itunes and when restoring the phone it keeps stopping at firmware.
So now I cant even get to to activation screen, the phone just keeps telling me to connect to itunes!
Lads can someone please tell me what the feck is going on???

Sad Professor

Was the phone jailbroken before you restored it? Was it locked to a network?

Try some of the suggestions here:

https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT201407

It's also possible they damaged something when they opened it.