Bypass activation screen?

[Lenxal]

Well... spent all day at the At&t store and on the phone with the supervisors going back and forth because one side was saying they could do it and the people at&t said it wouldn't work even though they put a note on my account saying it could be possible.

I did a cross upgrade with my brother upgrade and he's going to be out of town for 2-3 weeks so I can't activate this iPhone or else it will deactivate his phone and he really needs it. So is there anyway I can bypass this?

 

[goobot]

Well I'm pretty sure you can buddy upgrade online without issue(att). In store when buying from apple you need both phones, in att idk.

 

[sdsvtdriver]

Well... spent all day at the At&t store and on the phone with the supervisors going back and forth because one side was saying they could do it and the people at&t said it wouldn't work even though they put a note on my account saying it could be possible.

I did a cross upgrade with my brother upgrade and he's going to be out of town for 2-3 weeks so I can't activate this iPhone or else it will deactivate his phone and he really needs it. So is there anyway I can bypass this?

nope. you'll have to activate it, then call att and put his service back on his phone and then xfer your service to the new phone.

 

[Hatshepsut]

nope. you'll have to activate it, then call att and put his service back on his phone and then xfer your service to the new phone.

No, AT&T can't just "restore" service to the brother's phone, at least not remotely. I tried this at the Apple Store--did a cross-upgrade with my mom's line--and despite all the best efforts of Apple Geniuses and ATT&T reps in the store, there was no way to remotely reactivate my mom's phone. Once the new phone is activated on the line used for the upgrade, the previous phone/sim on that line is deactivated, and the only way to bring it back is to go to the AT&T store and get a new sim.

If doing home delivery, it looks like you can just pop out the sim that comes with the new phone and put in the sim from your old phone, assuming your old phone has a nano sim (iphone 5 or higher), and that activates the new line on your number without affecting the line used for the upgrade. Or you can call AT&T or go online. It seems the issue is only when you pick up in a store--they won't let you leave without activating the phone, and at least in the Apple Store, they wouldn't let me open the box to replace the sim card.