need advice consumer cellular

I am considering purchasing one of these and I need some advice I am only considering the Consumer Cellular version because I have a lot of gift cards and points from Sears.. Is this version pretty close to the full unlocked version? My main interest in this phone is the fact that it has band 12 & band 17 LTE (does Consumer Cellular disable that?). I had heard that this version is eligible for bootloader unlocking and that it is pretty easy to unlock so my question is if it is worth the headache..
I might be able to convert my gift card to amazon so i am just asking before I go about trying it.