I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. I was hoping they could figure out what the problem was.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone 15 Pro Verizon activation issues - iPhone 15 Pro?
- Thread starter jntdroid
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
First world problems for sure.
Based on history with Verizon, a few more days likely would've fixed whatever was hung up in Verizon's system. But I just didn't have any more time to spend on it.
I understand.First world problems for sure.
OK. I've had this happen on two different iPhone 15 Pros. On each, I used Quick Start, and I let it activate the line (not transfer, just activate - I purchased the phones linked to Verizon numbers, not "activate later"). I had activation problems with both.
IMPORTANT - on the Verizon web site for my account, on the device page - the device showed as tied to IMEI2, BUT the number they listed next to it was actually the IMEI for the phone. That's going to cause problems if your eSIM thinks it's using one number and Verizon thinks you're using the other.
The default activation process seems, in some instances to be mis-linking the IMEIs with the account. If that's true, you need to communicate to Verizon the actual IMEI and IMEI2 values, and ask them to compare them to the account setup. They will need you to be connected to Wifi, they'll attempt to reactivate the phone, and you'll have to reboot. Possibly more than once.
In each case, when it came back up, the phone was activated, I could place and receive calls, but I now had two "active" eSIMs - the one Verizon activated, and the "bad" one from the initial phone setup. I also had two signal strength indicators.
They appeared on my phone (YMMV) as "Primary" - the one that didn't work, and "Cellular Data" - the one that did. When you go to Settings -> General -> About, you'll see that one of the eSIMs shows "Unavailable" for the Network - this is the eSIM that needs to be deleted.
Just go back over to Settings -> Cellular and delete the eSIM that lines up with the "Unavailable" network, and your eSIM list will collapse down to 1, you'll get 1 signal strength indicator back again, and on Settings -> General -> About you'll see your eSIM tied to IMEI2, which is what Verizon expects by default, and IMEI will show up as "Available SIM".
Sorry for the wall of text. I just had a very consistent experience with this, thought I'd share. Also, the agent you get is critical - the first time I went through this, the rep understood EXACTLY what I was telling her, knew exactly what was needed, it was probably the perfect tech support call, I was never asked to do something I had already done! The second one, the agent wasn't so experienced, and I had to walk them through it a little more. Escalate if you need to!
IMPORTANT - on the Verizon web site for my account, on the device page - the device showed as tied to IMEI2, BUT the number they listed next to it was actually the IMEI for the phone. That's going to cause problems if your eSIM thinks it's using one number and Verizon thinks you're using the other.
The default activation process seems, in some instances to be mis-linking the IMEIs with the account. If that's true, you need to communicate to Verizon the actual IMEI and IMEI2 values, and ask them to compare them to the account setup. They will need you to be connected to Wifi, they'll attempt to reactivate the phone, and you'll have to reboot. Possibly more than once.
In each case, when it came back up, the phone was activated, I could place and receive calls, but I now had two "active" eSIMs - the one Verizon activated, and the "bad" one from the initial phone setup. I also had two signal strength indicators.
They appeared on my phone (YMMV) as "Primary" - the one that didn't work, and "Cellular Data" - the one that did. When you go to Settings -> General -> About, you'll see that one of the eSIMs shows "Unavailable" for the Network - this is the eSIM that needs to be deleted.
Just go back over to Settings -> Cellular and delete the eSIM that lines up with the "Unavailable" network, and your eSIM list will collapse down to 1, you'll get 1 signal strength indicator back again, and on Settings -> General -> About you'll see your eSIM tied to IMEI2, which is what Verizon expects by default, and IMEI will show up as "Available SIM".
Sorry for the wall of text. I just had a very consistent experience with this, thought I'd share. Also, the agent you get is critical - the first time I went through this, the rep understood EXACTLY what I was telling her, knew exactly what was needed, it was probably the perfect tech support call, I was never asked to do something I had already done! The second one, the agent wasn't so experienced, and I had to walk them through it a little more. Escalate if you need to!
My phone arrives Monday and I’ve been dreading this. Verizon’s cell service has been great for me, but their customer service is among the worst I’ve ever had to deal with. Everything takes hours and sometimes into days, with multiple call and chat sessions. Their back end legacy systems are really showing their age.
This is REALLY great info. And I believe my initial setup process might've been part of the problem as well, because your eSIM description sounds about how my situation started. However, we did get the first eSIM cleared out, and even once they got it right on the line itself (showing IMEI 2), the phone wouldn't "re-grab" anything no matter what we tried. They continued to blame a hang-up in the order system, but who knows. I just thought it was funny when a tier 3 tech person with Verizon AND Best Buy both finally said, "you just need to return and reverse this whole thing."
Man that's so true. I love Verizon's service - and honestly their customer service has always been good to me. But if there are ever any issues like this or other account issues, it is a nightmare to deal with. I knew after the 2 hour call with tech support last Friday this was going to turn into that...
When their highest level tech support can't solve something as simple as activating a new phone, and literally gives up and says to just return it, you know they need to fix some stuff on their end...
I have been trying to switch from an iPhone X to an iPhone 15 Pro and I'm having this exact issue. Chat support was not able to correct it. After hours of trying and multiple factory resets, they are now asking me to go to a store. I'll be visiting a local Victra store today to get this all sorted. If that also fails I'll return the device and look for other options.
Oh and worst of all: They deactivated the SIM in my iPhone X so I'm completely offline and can't even use 2FA for some of my work accounts.
Last edited:
Ugh, that's frustrating.
If it's any encouragement (which it likely isn't right now), after I returned mine, I went back a few days later (to Best Buy again as well) and let them handle the process from start to finish (as opposed to an online order and trying to activate it myself) and I was in and out in about 15 minutes, no issues at all. So it is technically possible...
I went to the Victra store as promised. My sales rep had to call into some Verizon back office and seemingly went through all the same things I had already gone through multiple times as she got transferred up the chain: "What's the IMEI? What's the IMEI2? Turn the phone off and on again."
I couldn't make out all the details – special shoutout to the sales rep next to us who loudly proclaimed that USB-C was the "last charger you will ever have to buy!" – but it sounded like the system thought my account or device "was ineligible for the activation". The call was then finally transferred to a "supervisor" who was able to override whatever lock they encountered. Lo and behold, one restart later all the text messages from the past 14 hours finally started arriving!
All in all this took about 4 hours of me talking to support over the past days and 2 more hours standing in the Victra store today. Gotta love the simplicity of this glorious new digital SIM world.
I couldn't make out all the details – special shoutout to the sales rep next to us who loudly proclaimed that USB-C was the "last charger you will ever have to buy!" – but it sounded like the system thought my account or device "was ineligible for the activation". The call was then finally transferred to a "supervisor" who was able to override whatever lock they encountered. Lo and behold, one restart later all the text messages from the past 14 hours finally started arriving!
All in all this took about 4 hours of me talking to support over the past days and 2 more hours standing in the Victra store today. Gotta love the simplicity of this glorious new digital SIM world.
Good thing we pay that $35 activation fee for all the work they do to get our phones activated...
With all the IMEI/2 problems, it really makes me wonder how many people upgraded from eSIM phones successfully, without intervention?
Welp, 2 new iPhone 15 Pro Max, bought from Verizon to replace existing phones on existing Verizon lines on the same account, neither one will activate. Says something about activating phone during setup process (is this Apple's activation or Verizon's?) but it never works. Tried fully restoring the phones multiple times, both from the phone and in the Finder while plugged into a desktop Mac, and tried different setup techniques, nothing works. Also tried the option to transfer SIM from other phone, but our old phones are iPhone X with physical SIMs and I guess it doesn't like that (got a "Your SIM is not supported" message when trying it). Disabled Find My on the old phones first and tried toggling cellular and rebooting many times. To be clear, the phone appears to set up fine (even will transfer iCloud settings, apps with logins, photos, and everything), it's just the cellular/calling that won't work.
Bought through Verizon thinking the setup would be a breeze because it's all on the same network, but it's turning into a nightmare. Going to have to take a day off from work to try to sort it out and will probably end up spending the day in a Verizon store going over all the crap I already tried again. Extremely disappointing, a really terrible user experience from Verizon and even though I think it's Verizon's problem, it doesn't reflect well on Apple either. This kind of $#!+ shouldn't still be happening in 2023.
Bought through Verizon thinking the setup would be a breeze because it's all on the same network, but it's turning into a nightmare. Going to have to take a day off from work to try to sort it out and will probably end up spending the day in a Verizon store going over all the crap I already tried again. Extremely disappointing, a really terrible user experience from Verizon and even though I think it's Verizon's problem, it doesn't reflect well on Apple either. This kind of $#!+ shouldn't still be happening in 2023.
Last edited:
My experience upon getting my new Blue 15 PM last Friday - The 15PM refused to activate and the blue circular thing wouldn't read my camera from my 13 Mini and I had to skip the activation process then tried to activate the PM via the settings menu. It still wouldn't activate then I tried deleting the eSIM on both iPhones - No go so had to use live chat with Verizon to get my eSIM restored. I had to provide them with the IMEI addresses from the 15 PM.
I was able to activate my eSim without intervention from Verizon. However, I did have hiccups. I tried following a video to activate eSim by going into the settings and adding eSim. It failed. I got it working by going into the set up process button that you get when you have a new iPhone and just hit the activate eSim from there and it worked.
So I finally figured out how to activate the new phones on Verizon when replacing another phone on an existing line. First, make sure the new phone is turned off (not slept, all the way off). Then turn off Find My on the old phone in Settings. Then you have to call Verizon at 800-922-0204 from the old phone you want to replace. It's an automated system and you have to tell it you're interested in "activation". Follow the instructions and it'll say it's activating and at some point the phone call will drop. That's OK. Then you can boot up the new phone and after some searching it should then connect to the Verizon cel network (assuming you have cel coverage there) and replace your old phone, which will no longer work for calling. If you want to transfer your data off the old phone, make sure you don't erase it yet. You may also need it on and connected to wifi to verify accounts (the "other device" thing) — I have multiple desktop Macs running the latest OS and none of them received the verification.
Note that this probably only works if you bought the phone through Verizon and, during the purchasing process, told it which phone(s) are replacing which existing phone(s) on certain line(s). What's annoying is none of this was documented anywhere in the phone shipment materials, even though I bought the new phones directly from Verizon, nor could I find instructions for this method on their web site. Not sure how people are supposed to know what to do.
Note that this probably only works if you bought the phone through Verizon and, during the purchasing process, told it which phone(s) are replacing which existing phone(s) on certain line(s). What's annoying is none of this was documented anywhere in the phone shipment materials, even though I bought the new phones directly from Verizon, nor could I find instructions for this method on their web site. Not sure how people are supposed to know what to do.
The same issue happened to me with Xfinity. I had used a physical SIM while in Europe. Xfinity now considered I was using a different device. That caused many problems with my trade and activation on my existing number. It may be a common problem on all, or many carriers, because of the way that IMEIs are reported to carriers and between carriers.