Verizon subscribers who purchased their Apple Watch somewhere other than Verizon are reporting activation issues when attempting to connect their wearable on Verizon’s cellular network. Users that have experienced the issue report they have “spent hours” on the phone with Verizon support to convince the carrier to fix the issue. (Via AppleInsider)
User “Tim” posted in the Verizon Community Forums to tell the world about his experience, which is apparently related to whether or not the customer purchased their Apple Watch through Verizon or from another vendor. Verizon-provided Apple Watches generally don’t have issues in activating on the provider’s cellular network.
“When Verizon receives product from Apple for their inventory, Verizon logs the IMEI number into their system,” wrote Tim. “When you go through… activation, the Watch App looks for the IMEI [International Mobile Equipment Identity] number in the Verizon system, finds it.. and voila, a connection to the Verizon network is made.”
Unfortunately, if the customer is trying to activate an Apple Watch obtained from another vendor, even from Apple itself, the IMEI number is not present in Verizon’s database, so the Apple Watch will fail to activate.
“All the pairing, unpairing, resetting, etc is not going to make a bit of difference,” continued the user. “Nor will cancelling the service on that line and starting a new service.”
The only solution appears to be to convince Verizon to enter the Apple Watch’s IMEI into its database. However, you REALLY have to push a Veriaon tech to enter the IMEI into the database to resolve the issue:
You will need to push HARD to get to Verizon’s Engineering tech level to get a “ticket” created to manually add the IMEI to their database. I went through 2 Verizon store managers and countless service techs (all of whom demanded to “try” and activate the cellular service before pushing me forward) before FINALLY convincing one to create the ticket.
Multiple Verizon issues have reportedly experienced this issue, so you’d think Verizon techs would be aware of the problem and how to resolve it. Unfortunately, the technical team seems to be unaware of the issue or how to resolve it. Verizon has yet to comment on the issue.
Galaxy Watch Ultra 7 users are apparently experiencing similar issues, as one Verizon customer took to Reddit back in July because Verizon said it was unable to activate their device because it was too new, and it had not yet been entered into their system. The user was told to try again later in the month when the system had been updated.
Other Reddit users report similar issues with their new Galaxy Watch Ultra 7.