new contract snafu and e-sim

[ctjones]

my wife is with vodafone - on 1 month rolling on out of contract iphone 11 with the number she has had forever - let’s call that ‘fave’

she got excited about new iphone 16 and saw a deal on mobiles.co.uk and bought that / not really realising she was getting  a new contract and you can’t port numbers in network.

when setting up the new iphone from the old one it asked if she wanted to transfer number - she said yes and fave number was loaded on to e-sim in new iphone16

what this means is that her new contract number is still sat in provisioning (or something ) and her old rolling contract is now on her new iphone 16

was thinking to pac the old number to EE and back to do an inter network move - but it feels like she has ‘lost’ her new number / contract.

any thoughts on how to get the new number back again - presumably on the iphone16 so we can do the old switcheroo via EE.

[ctjones]

(and then cancel the rolling contract and be on the new 2 year contract)

[Charlotte]

Hello, @ctjones. I hope you're well. 

If your wife currently has two services and only needs one with her existing number, you can request that the old number (which you want to keep) be changed to Pay As You Go. 

Once it's on PAYG, you can fill in the Keep My Number form to request that the existing number replace the new number which is on the new contract.

It's an internal way of doing it, since it's already on the same network and so a PAC wouldn't work internally. 

[ctjones]

hi - thanks for the payg info - do you have any idea how she might activate -/ re get her new contract phone number on the iphone16? as i think its been overwritten with her old number 

[Charlotte]

Does she have ESIMs for both numbers, @ctjones? If so, it may be that the old number is set up as the primary, and you may need to select the correct number. You can find out more about this here. 

If she's using an ESIM for one number and a physical SIM for another, that would be different, as dual SIM usage can also be supported in that way. 

If the ESIM for the new number has completely disappeared, it can be requested via the MyVodafone online account. If you need further support with generating the ESIM, please reach out to us on Social Media.

You can find information about deleting and installing ESIMs here. 

[ctjones]

the ESIM for the new number has completely disappeared -  on the phone to Vodafone Support the lady couldn’t see the new contract just a number sat in ‘provisioning’ Which she couldn’t tell us anything about because it hadn’t been set up with a pin number

[ctjones]

my guess is the new number has never been activated - As it was replaced with the old number and the phone was turned on -and this is causing problems

[ctjones]

(The new number was replaced with the old number as the phone was  Turned on for the first time as part of Apple copying Data off the old phone)

[Charlotte]

Hmm, okay. I would definitely recommend getting in touch with our Social Media Team, so that they can take a deeper look into it for you, @ctjones. However, if there isn't a PIN set-up yet, I'd recommend that the account holder complete a security reset, otherwise they may have difficulty trying to discuss the account.

Even if the ESIM isn't active on the phone, there should still be an active service on the account, since a phone and contract were purchased. 

With that being said, it could be that it's not activated due to a separate error, such as us not getting all the contract details through from the third-party provider. But without accessing the account, I couldn't confirm that for certain.

[ctjones]

thanks so much for your help - will try what you’ve suggested and let you know what happens…. cheers!