A quick warning for anyone upgrading an Apple Watch online with EE:
When you do the upgrade, there’s a very high chance—if not every time—that EE will send the upgrade details to the watch number, which is effectively a dead number.
I upgraded my Ultra 2 to an Ultra 3 on the 12th. I received the order email, but strangely, it didn’t include an order number. I phoned EE that morning to check if the order had gone through, since this part usually messes up, resulting in an order email but no order on their system, meaning it has to be redone. The agent confirmed the order had gone through, which made a nice change.
Fast forward to a day or two before the 19th—still no texts, no emails, and the DPD app was empty. I called EE again, and once more they said everything looked fine on their end, though this time the agent gave me a DPD tracking number.
When I tracked it manually, it showed as shipped on the 18th at 1:30 pm. Yet the DPD app was still blank, and I had no communication at all. I phoned DPD, asked what number they had, and of course—it was my Apple Watch number. Brilliant. EE’s systems had treated the watch upgrade like a phone line upgrade and sent all the details to a dead number.
The issue with this is obvious: DPD requires a PIN, which had been sent to a number that can’t receive texts. I had to call EE again, explain the situation, and the agent basically went, “Oh yeah, that’s a common issue with watch online upgrades.” Are you kidding me, EE? Multiple agents, and no one caught this? He put me through to billing, I explained again, and thankfully that agent understood quickly. He changed the number to my primary phone.
Even so, the DPD driver arrived about five hours later but couldn’t hand over the package since the number was still wrong. Great job, EE. It then took around 24 hours for DPD’s system to update with my new number before I could finally get it redelivered. At last, I had my PIN.
So, for anyone upgrading a watch online: make sure you call EE and confirm that your primary phone number is being used for all communications.
What’s really frustrating is that this is a known issue—it’s been around for at least a year, if not longer, based on a quick Google search. There are even posts on these forums with other users complaining about the same thing. For a communications company, it’s pathetic that this problem still exists. Apple Watch numbers should never be used for upgrade communications—only the primary phone line.
EE, you really need to sort out your upgrade systems. They’ve sucked for a long time, and I say that as a customer of about 12 years.
