Apple Watch Mobile Data Problem

[Steve-W]

Posting this in case it helps other people struggling to setup an O2 mobile data plan on their Apple Watch, ie to add an Apple Watch plan that is then associated with the tariff of their paired iPhone.

Tried to setup the mobile plan on 26th Dec 2022 but the plan was left permanently ‘activating.

After multiple lengthy phone calls to O2 support ( often hanging up rather than trying to help), multiple agonisingly slow messages to Twitter and Facebook Messenger, all subsequent retries were met with the message…

We're setting up your Apple Watch on the 02 network and we'll text you when it's all done. If you don't receive a text within 24 hours, call 202 for free from your 02 mobile, quoting reference code 08. (or in some cases code 90).

After nearly 8 weeks and with O2 Support no nearer resolving this problem, I tried a suggestion mentioned elsewhere on this forum to perform a sim swap.

Before inserting the new sim I unpaired my watch.

After inserting and activating the new sim I then ran through once again the mobile data plan setup.

This time, the process started as it should, prompted me to select the tariff, received SMS text with t&c’s link, acknowledged receipt, accepted conditions, received a confirmation text and plan was FINALLY setup correctly.
So lesson if you have the same problem, is to unpair your watch and try a sim swap on your phone. In spite of sceptics, it worked !

O2 Support please take note and use this information to get to the root cause. It is presumably sim related or possibly related to your new 360 system which seems to be causing huge headaches for customers and stores.

[jonsie]

It's blatently obvious that general customer service have not been trained to find a solution to this

We have seen hundreds of posts about this issue and it's a sad reflection on the poor service given to customers who have spent obscene amounts of money on their Apple watches

General apathy abounds!

Really quite pathetic!

[Cleoriff]

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@jonsie wrote:

It's blatently obvious that general customer service have not been trained to find a solution to this

We have seen hundreds of posts about this issue and it's a sad reflection on the poor service given to customers who have spent obscene amounts of money on their Apple watches

General apathy abounds!

Really quite pathetic!

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Totally agree @jonsie. I know you have been here longer than me but in all my years here I have never found ONE issue which has taken so long to sort. The amount of posts on this since before Christmas is beyond ridiculous!🙄

[kkrox]

Thank you for this - have ordered sim swap - fingers crossed this works for me!

[Steve-W]

Yep fingers crossed. Would advise you unpair your watch before performing the sim swap, just so you start clean after the sim swap.

[kkrox]

It worked! Thank you so much. Been back and forth with 02 since early December. 

[Steve-W]

That’s great news. Just hope O2 learn something from this and come up with a solution.

[ta88ycat]

Didn’t work for me. Error code 08 is now 10 though 😡

[Oxonian]

@ta88ycat 

Have you tried searching this forum for that new error code ? There are several posts that mention it and someone might just have posted a solution that might just work for you.  

[ta88ycat]

Fixed it here. https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Tech-Support/The-dreaded-Apple-Watch-won-t-connect-error-08/m-p/166950...