Question about eSIM plan popup notification on secondhand device

[Charlie_S]

Hi folks,

I'll try and keep this concise. 

Just bought a secondhand iPhone, which was fully reset to factory and iCloud free etc. So far so good and normal. Issue is, when setting it up, I had this option to "Install Data Plan - A data plan from "Vodafone UK" is ready to
be added to iPhone." I've never seen anything like this before. So I dismissed this option and setup the device as normal, using my own EE physical sim, which works fine. I keep getting however a popup message proposing to install this Vodafone data plan, and when I dismiss it, it comes back after 30 mins or so. I can't stop this from happening. 

So I tried to contact the previous owner but it's Gumtree, and well he's not very helpful so far. 

Am I correct in assuming this device had from new an eSIM data plan linked with it, and that the owner of this plan has to either cancel it or transfer it to a different device in order for these messages to disappear? 

I tried the option of going ahead and installing the plan, and then removing it from the phone. However that didn't stop the device asking me to install it again. If I can't get the original owner to remove this, I don't want to live with constant notifications about something I can't stop or delete. 

I did think of just installing the plan and them switching it off, but that's not really a proper solution, even if it does stop the popup and I don't plan on using an eSIM myself. Which leads me to think - if I install an eSIM plan from a different provider, will that erase the Vodafone plan linked to this device? If I then delete that new plan, will the Vodafone plan still reappear? 

As I said I've never come across this before, I did spend most of this morning trying to google this but haven't seen anything that helped. Only some folk with similar issues on iPads.

Looking for some help on here before I hassle the original owner again. or go into a Vodafone store. 

Thanks

[Charlie_S]

A couple of screenshots to better explain what I'm seeing. The first one is what you see when setting up/restoring the iPhone, the second one is the popup alert notification that keeps appearing.

[HelpfulBadger]

Hi Charlie,

You are correct in why it's popping up, but I'm afraid I'm not sure what the solution would be if you've already tried contacting the seller.

iPhones (and to a lesser extent Samsung/Andriod devices, which you might have to manually trigger) can automatically search for eSIM profiles that have been registered to that particular device, so even though the phone's been factory reset, the profile is still sat there waiting to be loaded. This would need to be sorted at the network level and either have the EID removed so the profile's not linked to a device (and to be reloaded it would need to have a QR code scanned) or changed back to a physical SIM.

In my view you have 3 options:

• Try and contact Vodafone and see if they have a process for doing this when you're not the account holder, I imagine there should be one as mistyping happens etc.
• Check to see if there's a way of disabling the eSIM checks, but I can't find anything with a cursory search.
• Load the esim profile but fully disable it, but I'm not sure where that sits morally/legally/etc.

[Charlie_S]

Hi HelpfulBadger,

Thanks for that. I went to a Vodafone store today, the guy wasn't much help to be honest, in the sense that he couldn't do anything for me to resolve this. He suggested I go to an Apple store and try there, but I'm sceptical. He just told me that any action would have to come from the owner of the data plan since they are the Vodafone customer, not me. Which I get. 

I've read it's possible to transfer a physical SIM plan on to an eSIM, but is it possible the other way around? Could I load this eSIM plan, then somehow transfer it on to a physical SIM, and then not use that SIM (for eg send it back to the original owner and use my own SIM)? Even if this is possible, would it solve the issue?