Apple Watch Cellular Activation Errors and Customer Service Complaints

I have reached out 5 times now to support regarding the issues with activating my Apple Watch to the cellular network. Today I asked to be connected to a supervisor and after I connected they had asked about the IMEI for the device so I grabbed it and sent it. Within a minute I got a message saying the chat paused due to inactivity and that messaging again within 24 hours would reactivate it so I tried messaging again and got connected to another agent but got 0 responses from them. Eventually it did the same thing again so I messaged again and it was the name of the supervisor I had originally been connected with again so I tried message again and same thing still 0 responses I have the chat logs pulled. 

The issue I’m having with my Apple Watch is that whenever I try to go through the activation process for the cellular network it comes up with an error stating to reach out to customer service. The network thinks the device is activated while the eSIM has not actually set up on the watch. What happened was that I had gotten the watch paired to my IPhone and skipped the cellular set up since there was the paper in the box that said to scan the QR code for activation so once it was paired I scanned the code with my phones camera and started the activation process, at one point it came up asking in the watch was showing the network bars which it was not so I selected the no option and then tried going into the cellular option on my watch and it said there was no eSIM so I went into the Watch App and into the cellular section there and it still wouldn’t allow me to activate the device. So I reached out to CS for the first time over the phone and tried to talk to someone about the issue and tried unpairing and repairing the watch, they told me to use the option to set the watch up for a family member and not myself because the watch is to have its own phone number so I tried going that route and was getting errors signing into iCloud so we stopped at that point so I could look further into it because the information I entered in was correct, further into investigating on my end I found out the reason it was erroring was because I would need to use a different iCloud account since the system does not allow you to link to your own account if setting the device up for someone else and I do not have a secondary iCloud device so I reset the pairing and paired it again and set it to it being for me again and once again at the cellular option it errored again. So I once again reached out to support but via chat this time as I have some issues with my voice and I believe the rep I spoke with when I called in had trouble understanding me. The next rep I spoke with we spoke about the troubleshooting and attempted to again unpair the device and pair it again to no avail, we checked the WatchOS and it wasn’t up to date so we ended the chat since it was saying it was going to take a long time to download the update. Once the update was done I attempted to set up the cellular on the device again and again it failed so I reached out again for the 3rd time/2nd time via chat and explained the situation to this new rep and they tried to reset the activation on the website which did not work and we still could not get the watch activated so they told me they would send up a support ticket on it and we ended the chat. The next day I was looking for my tickets on the site to see if there were any updates, there was no new ticket entered so I reached out once again for the 4th time and explained the situation to the rep and they opened a ticket for me as they agreed that it seemed to be something network related. I knew with it being Friday evening that a resolve was likely not to happen until after the weekend and this morning I got a message saying the ticket was closed so I thought they had fixed the issue and I tried to set up the cellular on my phone again which failed once again, during that time I got another message saying that the ticket was still being worked on so I checked it on the site to see if it was open again but it was still closed so I reached out via chat again now my 5th time reaching out and explained everything that was going on and they told me they were reaching out to Tech and said from what Tech can see if that the line is activated and reaching the network and they’re able to reach out on it on the back end, I tried to explain that yes the network thinks the line is activated and getting connection but the watch is not set up with an eSIM so they told me about all the troubleshooting steps to try and explained that I have done those steps numerous times and it does not fix the issue, they asked me to reset the watch once more and that I should be able to activate the watch this time so I thought they may have finally reset and wiped the activation for the watch and reset it and tried to activate it again to which it still failed. I let the rep know and the rep told me that I would need to go into a store to work with someone there to see if it was a device issue, I explained that I worked in IT and have a solid understanding of how these things typically work and explained that because I followed the device activation steps outside of the Watch app that it broke the activation to the device and that it was Network related and not device related. The closest store to me is about 30 miles away and I already know that there’s nothing that they could do at the store to fix the issue. The Network thinks the device is activated and connected to the cellular network but it is now. This is when I asked to speak with a supervisor as it felt like the agent wasn’t actually listening to what I was trying to explain and then it was what I mentioned in the top of this post regarding CS. I’m absolutely appalled at how this has been handled.