Apple Watch Ultra and One Number - Plan being Dropped / not in use

[Crellster]

I went through a tortuous and painful onboarding journey with Vodafone to take out a Sim only (on an existing iphone 13 Pro Max) and add "One Number" so I could share the data with. 

I wasted my life talking to a bot that was completely unhelpful and a webchat service that wasn't much better

I spent hours on the phone to people who had no idea how to fix  the problem with countless resets. Eventually I got through to someone, who through some form of witchcraft managed to get my One Number working on my watch. 

I was also paying for a service that Vodafone couldn't deliver - I expected a pro-rata refund but no notification of such & which never materialised . 

Putting that to one side, I now at least had the working setup I wanted. 

That was then ... this is now. The plan has been dropped from my watch - it's there for very occasional use so I'm not checking the status but I see I have "No Sim" and "no Connection" on the watch. 

I can see by searching the forums this is a recurring complaint from Apple watch customers on One Number and is specific to Vodafone. I want someone to 1) get my watch working again 2) Assure me this won't keep happening 3) compensate me for the non-available service. 

[Shiplake]

Thanks @Thomas_H . Can you tell us what that means?  
10 June 2023 and I have just spent many hours getting my Apple Watch reconnected to One Number . Eventually got an ESim swap.

Will the fix you mention stop my watch being disconnected each time it needs an Apple update, or will Vodafone customer services know how to sort it in future?

[havenwarrior]

I know this may sound daft, but i believe the issue is when the Phone updates, and not the actual watch.

Tony W

[Shiplake]

@havenwarrior that does not sound daft at all.

[smnasn]

Both my phone and watch have updated since the watch eSim was reinstated and it is still working, also the 5th of the month has passed, and it is till working, so perhaps the alleged fix is actually working.

How are others getting on?

[Shiplake]

Hi @smnasn I was not aware that the day of the month might have had something to do with this problem. I had thought that it was to do with WatchOS updates, but then again I don’t use or check my One Number connection very often. I just expect it to be there when I do need it.

What software do you think has been fixed? Something on the Vodafone backend, or something in WatchOS ?

My WatchOS is 9.5.2

[smnasn]

HI @Shiplake, there are a few posts on this thread re the issue occurring on the 5th of each month. which ties in with my own (limited) experience.

Thomas_h earlier on (page 3) posted this:

"Just as a further update a fix has been found and is due to be deployed on the 7th June"

Since getting the service restored it has continued to work ok (and as stated I've been through an iOS and watchOS upgrade in that time) so fingers crossed it is sorted...

[swords1010]

@Gemma  It is already a pattern. There are a number of topics on the matter each with many comments. How is this not being recognised as a pattern is beyond me.

[jonnyp43]

Well said, pretending there isn’t a bigger issue is beyond ridiculous. 

[Crellster]

I’m surprised we’re getting schooled on the basic concepts of incident and service management. 

There’s an underlying issue. 

Theres a repeated pattern of One Number subscribers losing the service they’re paying for.

There’s an unreasonable expectation that the subscriber has to spot the problem. (This wouldn’t be so bad if the process to resolve was easy, not time consuming or it was infrequent) 

Theres no accountability at Vodafone.

Theres no path to resolution as people have been complaining for months and still it occurs. 

The challenge is I don’t expect to have to check every day the service is still working…. That’s what our contract is for. I only took my personal sim to use one number so this is completely unsatisfactory 

I also don’t have the time or energy to deal with the team as it takes hours or days to resolve each time. 

I couldn’t really care about the cost but I don’t understand why we aren’t compensated for loss of service on principle.

[Thomas_H]

I agree with the coconscious here that there appears to be an issue. I have gone through our channels to pull some examples and have raised a ticket to our technical team. Hopefully we can get some movement on it