Long story short, I sold a watch I had previously purchased on Craigslist and the buyer is claiming that t-mobile can’t/won’t activate it on his account because the esim is locked to a Verizon account. I have a VZW business account and was never able to activate it on my account. The IMEI is clear with T-Mobile. Have any of you heard of anything like this? My understanding is that an esim is not carrier lockable. Am I wrong?
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T-Mobile esim locked
- Thread starter Seand442
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Your iPhone and Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) must use the same carrier. If you change carriers on your iPhone,* you need to remove the previous service plan on your Apple Watch and sign up for a new plan
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207578
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207578
Try logging in to your iCloud account and go to settings/my devices, and see if you can find anything suspicious/relevant you can remove off of there...
You're not wrong and there seems to be a common worrying trend among the carriers ignorance about this.
Also see: Gave up on AW S3 LTE Verizon also here at MR
If you don't want to waste any more of your time and the new purchaser's time. Just ask the purchaser if they have an Apple store nearby. Your watch still under the 12 warranty, let Apple work with T-Mobile to correctly activate the watch on T-Mobile or replace the watch.
Note: There is no Carrier in the world that is locking the eSIM on the Apple watch! If you want more information on the real problem, please swing by the thread that @TiggrToo referenced.
Note: Carriers can and do Blacklist watches that are stolen or payments were never completed for a carrier purchase, however you indicated it showed clean on T-Mobile.
Dave
That was going to be my next move. I couldnt get it activated on my VZW business account, but that is another issue. I knew carriers can blacklist IMEIs, but never heard of an esim locked to an account on a different carrier.
