Apple Watch Family Plan

[guyank]

I've spent over an hour on the phone being passed around 5 departments so far this morning, none of which could help me. I've purchased 2 Apple Wacth SE Cellulars elsewhere and have been trying to set them up on a Family Member Plan. I get as far logging in to my account and accepting the T&Cs for the Family Watch SIM 1m but then receive the below

 

[creed74]

I get the same, I've not tried calling yet. Let me know how you get on please.

[Katie_B]

Hello @guyank. 

Welcome to the community. 

Since your post have you been able to resolve this with our technical care team on 150?

Katie

[Chris_B]

You can not have a family plan if you purchase the watch elsewhere.  To have a family plan you have to get the watch from EE and select that tariff type.   

EE only offer one tariff type for watches purchased elsewhere and that watch is linked to the account the iPhone is on so when the iPhone is left behind and someone calls that phone the watch will ring.     This is a paired tariff. 

 You can not add a watch to a PAYG device it has to be a device that has a contract that contract can be a sim only contract 
 
A family plan for a watch gives the watch its own number and is not linked to a number that’s within a phone.   

[guyank]

That's not true. After 2 hours on the phone it's been resolved. There were problems with my account having multiple account numbers and it was trying to associate the family plan to the wrong account number. When I eventually got through to the correct person in the Tech Support Team (at the second attempt of speaking to that team and the 5th person I spoke to), he was able to resolve it. 

[SimFig]

Guyank,

great to hear you were able to add non-EE purchased cellular watches to a Family member plan. 

I have exactly the same requirement. It would be super helpful if you can share some more info on the required steps eg did you initiate in store, what kind of EE phone account was the watch added to. Do you have any other tips on how to get this setup.

I would also love to know if you’ve found the setup works as you had expected. My scenario is to enable my 12 to have a means of communication & location tracking without giving them a dedicated phone. Really appreciate any insights you’re prepared to share. Thanks. 

[guyank]

Hi,

I bought 2 watches for exactly the same reason. I set them up using the Watch app on my iPhone and that gives you the option to add them on Family Member Plan. This should have been simple to achieve and was once my account issues were solved. It was frustrating that it took 2 hours on the phone to find someone who could rectify it, but it’s worked fine since then. We are able to control the contacts they can call/message through Screen Time. Location tracking is much less regularly updated than an iPhone, which was a surprise but understandable to save battery. At first, they got about 6 hours on a full charge, but they easily make the whole day now. We’ve also had an issue in the last couple of weeks where one of the children turned off iMessage and were sending Memojis by MMS. Luckily we realised before they racked up a huge bill. We’ve subsequently had a bit of an education on the difference between green and blue messages!

Guyan

[SimFig]

Very helpful. Thanks very much indeed.
From my perspective I’ve had the Apple-bought-watch setup as a ‘Family Watch’ on my iPhone for my 12 year old without cellular being activated so far and noticed some additional settings like ‘Schooltime’ (in addition to ‘Screentime’) - I need to figure out how they operate so as to leave relevant features active at the right time. 

I was also curious about how a family watch can join WiFi networks - eg the one at school - to supplement cellular. Presumably this operates in the same way as a paired Watch I.e. the associated phone must connect to the WiFi network and then these credentials are synced to the family watch too.