Transferring Apple Watch Cellular Plan to new Device (Series 9 / Ultra 2)

[Snook]

Hello 🙂

Anyone who's reading these forums likely knows what a disaster the Apple Watch Cellular Plan is with Three at times, leaving many people months without service for months when they get a new device. So I was hoping, considering many people may be upgrading on the 22nd Sep when the new devices come out, what's the proper process or the best way to do it, to achieve a good outcome?

I've heard different approaches:

• Remove the Plan from the Old Device; wait a while then setup the new Device
• Just go straight for setting up the new Device and during setup, just enable Cellular and it somehow works.
• Factory Reset the old Device, then setup the new device.

It would be good to know which of the following approaches (or any others I've missed) worked for people, to successfully transfer the plan without having to spend 10+ hours with the Three Support team and many months and still be unsuccessful? Trying to make the process as smooth as possible - and hopefully this thread can help others too.

@JonathanB - Could you give your input here if possible please?

[IanM]

I bought an Apple WatchUltra 3. As part of the setup process it asked if I wanted to move my cellular service to the new watch. And then it just got on and did did it! 

[Poly_phonic]

Thanks, IanM. Did you remove the cellular service from the old watch first, or just go ahead and set up the new one?

[Abysmalthree]

Good morning well it's a year later and still they have no new training as the same problem that they were telling last year is still happening they can't get the new watch to attach to three they just told me to wait for a month and still pay for he service that don't work I did everything you have said in your post still no help as the tech department is not helpful at all spent hours trying to fix this

[Abysmalthree]

Lol I was just told to remove the addon watch service myself using the app and as we all know this is not available. The guy from 3 told me sorry you are not happy and hung up on me

[daschles]

Hi - sent you a DM as both my wife and I are having terrible problems with the swap. She activated but is no service; I'm stuck in an activation loop. Customer service advice is "wait" which doesn't inspire hope!

[mysite123]

After 10 days of lots of calls to Three, numerous resets of my new Apple Watch (and new iPhone) I managed to get it working myself.

The key for me was to reset my Three password to one that did not include characters. I don’t know why this worked (the Apple Watch I replaced was only set up for SmartWatch pairing 12 months ago and the password was fine). Anyway,

• I changed the Three password to one with numbers and letters only.
• I cleared the Safari history on my iPhone.
• Set my display auto-lock to ‘never’ (temporarily of course).
• I unpaired and paired the watch again (whilst on charge).
• I opted to keep the smartwatch pairing plan (sometimes it asks when unpairing/pairing - other times it does not???).
• I made sure the Watch and iPhone were on the latest OS and it all worked! 
  
  

One point to note, in the watch app under Mobile Service/ Mobile Plan it was stuck on ‘activating’ for at least 25 mins. I stayed on this screen for the duration. Eventually the message changed from ‘Activating’ to ‘Three’ and the Watch is now paired.

The Watch App still had a red ‘1’ on the message ‘finishing set up this Apple Watch’ or whatever it says. I selected it and closed the App a few times - it would not go, eventually it did. Reminder, set display back to auto-lock. 

Hope this helps someone. 

[ChrisB1972]

I have had this issue for 3 months now, And just got my latest Bill which again is showing the Pairing ! 

Just been on the phone and they have confirmed the Add on will end on the 3rd October and given me a 7 pounds credit for this month as I was assured I would not have been charged ! 

Seems the only way round it is to give them 1 months notice and then re add the add on, and there system cannot cope with a simple swap over that the likes of o2 have ! 

My wife did the same with o2 the same day as me, and hers swapped over instally ! 

Three continue to try the its Apples fault, when it clearly isn't !!! 

[Lukeapricey]

I’ve had to do exactly the same thing, cancel the smartwatch pairing add on and wait a month for it to be deleted from my account.  It’s a complete farce and amateurish.  The worst part of it is, nobody in technical support had/still has any idea what to do or how to fix the issue so my advice would be not to waste your time.  Just call billing and cancel the add on - this can’t be done in the Three app (some advisors will try to fob you off and tell you to go away and use the app to cancel it yourself which you can’t do).  When I spoke to an advisor in billing she had absolutely no idea what smartwatch pairing was, let alone how to fix it.  So in a few weeks I’ll have to try and re activate a data plan on the Apple Watch app and hope it works.  All in all, a scam.