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aship22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 17, 2014
8
0
I would like to purchase an iPhone X for my sister as a gift. She is currently on our family plan and has a 6S that I just made the last payments on.

How can I complete the transaction without alerting her of the purchase? Picking up in store requires the old phone to be deactivated. Purchasing online requires a security text to be sent to her phone verifying her ID. Any suggestions?
 

Shadowbech

macrumors G3
Oct 18, 2011
9,038
5,894
I would like to purchase an iPhone X for my sister as a gift. She is currently on our family plan and has a 6S that I just made the last payments on.

How can I complete the transaction without alerting her of the purchase? Picking up in store requires the old phone to be deactivated. Purchasing online requires a security text to be sent to her phone verifying her ID. Any suggestions?
You can order from apple.com and if the store has it available, you can do a in-store pick up. From there you can request to have it "activate later". Or just order it online and have it delivered to you as they just come pre-activated.

If purchasing directly from the store, they will likely activate right away.

But as fr the last question, does it send the text to that number? or does it send the text to the account holder?
 

aship22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 17, 2014
8
0
The way I read it was that they would send a message to the phone number that is upgrading. Unfortunately I do not have any other lines to upgrade at the moment. I also don’t want to pay full price upfront if I don’t have to...
 

ApplePersonFreak

macrumors 65816
Sep 23, 2016
1,062
520
The way I read it was that they would send a message to the phone number that is upgrading. Unfortunately I do not have any other lines to upgrade at the moment. I also don’t want to pay full price upfront if I don’t have to...

Well at this point your only option IS to buy it outright if you don’t want her to know, either that or just give it to her early. Otherwise, if you were to get it at AT&T they’re going to activate it before you leave the store.
 
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