Family Setup nightmare

[slyronit]

So, I decided to buy my 9YO an Apple Watch SE for her birthday, mainly to be able to call her and track her location. She doesn’t have an iPhone so I decided to use Apple Watch Family setup using my phone. I read Apple’s documentation online and nowhere does it say whether I would share mobile data to her watch from my own number or she needs her own number for that. I did check the cellular carrier list and confirmed that my carrier (True Thailand) supports family setup.

I bought the watch and tried setting up mobile data on her watch from my own carrier. It said it is not supported. Fair enough, I went and bought her her own number, installed as an eSIM on my phone. Same result - will not let me setup mobile data. I went to my network provider and explained them the situation. It took a long time to explain why I have 2 watches on the same phone. Some of their staff said it is not supported. I took time to explain to them how family setup works and showed them Apple’s article saying it is supported for this carrier. They called people internally, spent a lot of time, but no one had heard of this or knew how to activate this.

So I went to another carrier here (also on the list on Apple’s website) and explained the situation to them and asked them if I bought a connection from them whether it would work. Same- no clue what I meant/wanted.

I have no idea what to do now. Should I just return the watch and give up?

 

[G35flyer]

Hello, If I am understanding you correctly you installed the 9YO’s cellular phone number service on your iPhone’s eSIM. If so that is not correct, you add the 9YO phone number to the eSIM of the Apple Watch SE. So when you set up a phone number with a Family Setup compatible cellular carrier you enter the EID for the Apple Watch SE and not your iPhone. After completing that if usually automatically provisions.….you may need to reboot the Apple Watch SE though.

 

[slyronit]

Hello, If I am understanding you correctly you installed the 9YO’s cellular phone number service on your iPhone’s eSIM. If so that is not correct, you add the 9YO phone number to the eSIM of the Apple Watch SE. So when you set up a phone number with a Family Setup compatible cellular carrier you enter the EID for the Apple Watch SE and not your iPhone. After completing that if usually automatically provisions.….you may need to reboot the Apple Watch SE though.

Hello. Thanks, I eventually found out the correct procedure. I have to get a new number for the 9YO as a family setup number. There’s no real to have that sim on any phone, only on the watch.

Unfortunately this is not documented anywhere on Apple’s website or on any other websites.

 

[slyronit]

So after visiting multiple carriers all day, I have a resolution.

AIS Thailand knew exactly what I wanted to do. So I got a new connection from them and they installed the family setup eSIM directly on my kid’s watch. Took barely 30 mins. I guess not many people here use this feature, so most people don’t know about it.

I wish Apple had better documentation on this subject or some other blogs documented this in detail, too.