Physical SIM - Phone not allowed (with ee SIM cards)

[Sighmohn]

Lost my iPhone 13 Pro Max so I phoned ee to get my sim and phone blocked incase it fell into the wrong hands. They sent me a new replacement sim to put into another phone - fine… But somebody found my phone a day later so I phoned ee to get the phone unblocked so I could just using the phone again. However using the new sim it just says “no service” and when I go into settings and physical SIM, it says “phone not allowed”. Interestingly I have tested other SIM cards from other network providers (eg Vodafone) and they work fine. And other ee sims also don’t work. So it is like the phone is still blocked from ever being used on the ee network again. What do I do? I don’t really want to leave ee but what other choice do I have? Spoken to ee on multiple occasions and they are unable to resolve. Any help greatly appreciated…

[Katie_B]

Hello @Sighmohn. 

Thanks for coming here. 

It's great to hear that your phone has been found 🙂

I would recommend getting back in touch so our customer care team can ensure all bars have been removed. 

Once a bar has been removed from our agents it can take up 24 hours to start working again. 

Katie

[Sighmohn]

Hi Kate,

Thanks for the reply. I have been on the phone to customer care quite a few times and they assure me that all bars have been removed. It will be 48 hours this lunchtime since the bars were lifted. I have gone through all troubleshooting on my device. The only thing I haven’t tried is a full factory reset. But I’m reluctant to do that. Also my testing with various different SIM cards from other networks that work fine leads me to believe this is an issue with the bars not being lifted properly. Or that something permanent / irreversible was applied to my handset when I reported it lost that means that I can never use it with an ee sim. When I go to physical sim it says “phone not allowed” and below that identifies it as an ee sim that is inserted. So it is being read by the SIM card tray but just says it isn’t allowed in my handset.  

[Katie_B]

Hi @Sighmohn. 

Thanks for getting back to me. 

Was your handset blacklisted?

When you have called our customer care team to let them know this is still not working what was advised?

Speak soon, 

Katie

[Sighmohn]

Hi Katie,

Yes I assume so. Sorry, maybe I’m getting confused with all the different terms (bars, blacklist, blocked, restricted etc). In summary somebody at ee took action when I lost my phone so that it wouldn’t be useble if it got into the wrong hands. I assume they disabled my old sim (and therefore sent me a new one) and also blacklisted the handset.

The last call it was decided that I could get a new phone because the SIM card tray might be damaged. Or I could just go to another network provider because other provider SIM cards work fine. This seems like the best option to me although I don’t really want to leave ee. I’d also like to keep my number. 

[Katie_B]

Hi @Sighmohn. 

It should be a case of lifting the bars for your new EE SIM to work in your device.

I would recommend getting back in touch and speaking with our technical care team who can look into this further. 

Katie

[Sighmohn]

Hi Katie,

I’ve been told the removal of the handset from the blacklist might not have gone through fully, and is stuck in the system, hence the delay. (Or something like that!?)… All very confusing. I’ve been told to wait the weekend to see if the ee sim starts working in the phone. I’ve arranged to talk to somebody at ee again on Monday morning to raise a ticket if it still isn’t working. 

[Katie_B]

Thanks for coming back here @Sighmohn. 

Please be sure to keep us updated. 

Katie

[Sighmohn]

Thanks.  But it looks like I might need to change provider as ee sims no longer work in my iphone. Nevermind!