[dghlsakjg]

Wow. That really sucks.

As a counterpoint (not sure if this was t-mobile, apple, or both), I just upgraded from an iPhone 11 with physical sim, to iPhone 17 with esim.

All I had to do was hold the new phone next to the old one, and it just transferred the line over and deactivated the old sim automatically. I wasn't even in the US (so not even on their network), and it was stupidly seamless.

It sounds like t-mobile support has gone downhill. Last time I had to contact support was 2020, and it was really easy back then. I rarely had to wait more than 5 minutes to get a human, and I once had an issue escalated to the "executive resolutions" team and resolved to my satisfaction the day it was opened.

[joecool1029]

Apple’s system mostly works. If you need to reissue an esim without being able to transfer from an existing device on T-Mobile though need to either call in and give imei or get past the chatbot and there’s a page text support can give you to enter details. I was never able to successfully use the shit t-life app’s manage esim option.

[craftkiller]

> Last time I had to contact support was 2020, and it was really easy back then

Looks like that was 2 CEOs ago (Mike Sievert in 2020 and Srini Gopalan in 2025) so one of them probably bears the responsibility for this decline.

2024 might have been the start of forcing us to fight with toasters: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/business/t-mobile-launches-int...

and 2024 seems to also be when they locked down their esim transfer process: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/1cnphk4/android_es...

So I guess Mike Sievert drove t-mobile into the ground?

[sagarm]

You were on the happy path. I just had to get involved for a family member that broke their Apple phone and couldn't get their SIM transferred. Even after adding them as an authorized user under duress, they had to physically go to a T-Mobile store to get their phone on the network.