cannot access esim due to phone fault and reset

[mcloughlin7]

I have had my iphone 13 mini's battery critically fault (2 months after warranty). I am living in KSA since this happened and the official apple merchants (Jarir bookstore) sent the phone from the store (tabuk) to Riyadh to be fixed. They gave no explanation of what is being fixed, didn't listen to my personal situation with needing the esim and charged me £400 to replace the rear system and fully reset the iphone. I had to wait 2 weeks to receive my phone with no guidance on how it has been fixed and how I get back into the system. I am now in a situation where I cannot setup the iphone as it is sending pin codes to my EE UK esim. I have no physical sim card to install in the phone as the esim made this redundant. When I requested a new esim from EE online and tried to set it up on another phone, it sends a pin to my current EE number to activate this new sim. I have no access to my EE sim card and it seems the only way to get into both my apple account or to get a new sim card, requires me to have access to this phone number. As I am abroad in KSA I cannot call EE. Please can someone advise on what I need to do, as I have no access to my phone, apps or mobile banking to pay bills back in UK? I need to get my UK EE sim card at least temporarily into another phone so I can receive the authentication pin codes allowing me to release apple and EE security.

[bristolian]

Unfortunately you've come across one of the shortcomings of eSIM.

Without an active SIM you can't connect to foreign networks, to receive any text messages - thus you are now in a Catch-22 situation.

A replacement physical SIM could be issued at an EE retail store or sent to your home address, thus resolving this - but again, you'll need to be in the UK.

[mcloughlin7]

Thanks for the response.

Am I right in assuming EE will not have any security measures to allow someone to activate a new e-sim without access to their current sim (due to their phone malfunctioning) whilst living abroad? i.e. the only way you can activate a new e-sim is to have access to your current e-sim?

I am surprised if this is the case because if someone loses their phone, or it malfunctions like my situation, they have no possible method of getting access to the sim and hence the authentication pin number.

As noted, this phone number is required for me to access all of my personal apps, including banking.

[bristolian]

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@mcloughlin7 wrote:

I am surprised if this is the case because if someone loses their phone, or it malfunctions like my situation, they have no possible method of getting access to the sim and hence the authentication pin number.

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It's not an uncommon query on this forum, for users to report "I've lost my SIM abroad". A replacement SIM can only be supplied to the UK, and thus has a similar "catch-22" element to it.

The complication in your case is that an electronic SIM is embedded into the phone and has been deleted, so you don't have the luxury of simply putting a working physical SIM into another working device.

[Chris_B]

@mcloughlin7  The problem you have is that you are abroad the eSIM can not be activated while outside the UK because the information that could be sent if you was to call customer services to get it activated via them will not be received by the phone because you are trying to do this via a roaming network.      You can not even activate a sim when outside the UK because it doesn’t work via a roaming network.    The only way around this is to request a replacement SIM card and thats  sent to your UK billing address and someone there will need to activate it and then post this to you.