Hi all,
I've just upgraded my Apple Watch which I have a cellular contract for with EE, so wanted to move my plan from my old watch to my new one. Before doing so, I had a look on here to see if the process had got any easier since the last time I did it 3 years ago, and given one of the first posts that came up was my own post from 3 years ago (when it all went horribly wrong), it looks like there's still a lot of confusion - and in some cases some posts that are outright wrong - so I thought I'd put this up in case it helps anyone. After cobbling together bits of info from various forum posts and Reddit I moved my contract from my old watch to my new watch yesterday, it took all of 10 mins, and was entirely painless. Here's what I did:
1. Unpair your old watch - this will create a backup as part of the process that you use when setting up your new watch.
2. When it asks, keep your cellular plan.
3. Set up/update your new watch, and let it go through the whole process. Keep the box of the new watch handy!
(Bonus tip - don't set up apple pay yet if you use it, just in case anything goes awry and you have to restart.)
4. Once that has all done, when you're doing final setup steps, you'll be asked if you want to add cellular or skip. Say yes to adding it. On the EE-branded page that'll come up, choose the option that says retain existing plan (or something like that - I can't remember the exact wording). This will then give you a page saying 'nearly there you need to contact EE customer services'.
5. Phone 150, go through the options using the visual interface thing you'll be texted to get to smart devices and then technical support, and when you get to speak to someone say something like "I have an apple watch with EE, and I've bought a new one and just want to transfer the eSIM from my old watch to the new one to continue the contract. I have the EID number ready to do this." The EID number is a 24-digit code printed on the back of the apple watch box on the sticker with various barcodes on it (see, I told you it would come in handy!) in annoyingly small print - crack out the reading glasses if needed! (If you don't have the box, you can copy it down from settings>general>about>EID from your watch itself)
6. Hopefully who you speak to will pick up on all this and be able to sort it for you - you should be asked to read the EID number to them, and will have to turn your watch off and on again and close/reopen the watch app on your phone, but it should all go through and you'll end up with 'pending' in the Watch app under the 'mobile plan' section. This can take 4 hours to go through, but took 5 minutes for me and it was done! Same number, same contract, just a straight swap.
Things you don't want or need to do:
- Do not add a new contract, set up a family plan, or accept it if the person you speak to says you have to end one contract and start a new one. You don't. If this happens, ask to please speak to someone else.
- Some posts on here say if you select to keep the plan and then just add it again on your new watch, it will work. This is wrong. This *does* work on some other networks where the transfer is automatic (which I'm guessing is where that info has come from), but it does not work on EE at the moment.
Hope that helps someone out!
