I have family members on my AT&T plan that I’m trying to move to a MVNO (Consumer Cellular). Everything is normal procedure on 3 of the phones, but one OnePlus 8 phone is showing as not compatible with their system when I enter the IMEI to order the SIM card to start this process.
I want to figure out how to get the SIM card and then activate it and port over the phone number from AT&T on this phone.
Background:
Back in January we upgraded 4 phones by buying unlocked phones from online stores.
Three of the phones are identical OnePlus 8 - model IN2017.
All of the phones were activated and are working on the AT&T network. There was no problem activating the problem phone on AT&T.
Two of the IN2017 phones show up as compatible on the Consumer Cellular site when ordering the SIM card. These two were bought from an Ebay retailer and were listed as new, unused phones.
The phone that shows as incompatible was a refurbished phone from a seemingly reputable reseller.
I tried the problem phone’s IMEI on other MVNO sites that use the AT&T network (Cricket, Straight Talk, H2O) and the same incompatible message comes up there too.
Note that the two phones that show up as compatible have an IMEI brand prefix of 9900 1575. The problem phone’s prefix is 9900 1597.
1597 shows up as clean on IMEI checkers, and is listed as an IN2017.
Using random IMEI, I checked, and any IMEI with that 1597 prefix comes up incompatible (tried 5).
We know that this phone is compatible on the AT&T network. I can be pretty sure that an activated SIM will work in this phone. So how do I do it?
Any advice would be appreciated, particularly if you’ve actually done something like this before.
Also note that the problem phone is 3000 miles away. There are lots of things I would try if I had it in my hands, but the solution I try probably should be fairly simple in this case.
I want to figure out how to get the SIM card and then activate it and port over the phone number from AT&T on this phone.
Background:
Back in January we upgraded 4 phones by buying unlocked phones from online stores.
Three of the phones are identical OnePlus 8 - model IN2017.
All of the phones were activated and are working on the AT&T network. There was no problem activating the problem phone on AT&T.
Two of the IN2017 phones show up as compatible on the Consumer Cellular site when ordering the SIM card. These two were bought from an Ebay retailer and were listed as new, unused phones.
The phone that shows as incompatible was a refurbished phone from a seemingly reputable reseller.
I tried the problem phone’s IMEI on other MVNO sites that use the AT&T network (Cricket, Straight Talk, H2O) and the same incompatible message comes up there too.
Note that the two phones that show up as compatible have an IMEI brand prefix of 9900 1575. The problem phone’s prefix is 9900 1597.
1597 shows up as clean on IMEI checkers, and is listed as an IN2017.
Using random IMEI, I checked, and any IMEI with that 1597 prefix comes up incompatible (tried 5).
We know that this phone is compatible on the AT&T network. I can be pretty sure that an activated SIM will work in this phone. So how do I do it?
Any advice would be appreciated, particularly if you’ve actually done something like this before.
Also note that the problem phone is 3000 miles away. There are lots of things I would try if I had it in my hands, but the solution I try probably should be fairly simple in this case.