Can’t connect Cellular Apple Watch & Pay as You Go Phone

[chrislou1]

I have recently bought a cellular Apple Watch from Apple but am having difficulty setting up the mobile data connection.  I have a pay as you go phone (iPhone XR) and when I go into the mobile date section of the watch app on my phone it just says that my plan is not compatible with setting up mobile data and I can go no further with the process / cannot access to buy a watch data pack.  Is there any way I can set up the cellular/mobile data connection / get the watch data pack without having to change from being pay as you go as I really don’t want to?  Many thanks in anticipation.

[Christopher_G]

Hi @chrislou1

Welcome to the community.

You can only set up an Apple Watch plan to use your phone's allowances if you have a pay monthly plan.

Chris

[chrislou1]

Thanks Chris.  That’s not the reply I was hoping for🙁 and it seems rather unfair on pay as you go customers to me.  Can’t understand why you have to be a pay monthly or sim only customer to set up an Apple Watch plan🤔.  Guess I won’t be using my watch’s cellular capability - if I’d known I couldn’t use it ( everything on Apple site & here seemed to suggest to me that I could) then I wouldn’t have spent the extra to get cellular in the first place.

Anyway thanks again for answering my question🙂.

[Alex_S · Accepted solution]

Hi @chrislou1,

You will need a pay monthly account as the Watch will be billed through this.

You could look at setting it up on a Family Member Plan if you have a family member with an EE pay monthly account and an iPhone who would do this for you.

If you bought the Watch direct from EE and you are within 14 days of this you can speak to our Customer Care Team regarding returning the Watch and looking at a different variant.

Alex 🙂

[chrislou1]

Thanks for giving me those options Alex, unfortunately I don’t have a family member who could set it up on a Family Member Plan and I bought my watch direct from Apple. So I‘ll just have to leave it as it is, it’s not a big issue as I am never  too far from my phone so the watch can still do it’s stuff via the Bluetooth connection, it just would have been nice to have it all functioning.  Thanks again for your help🙂