Activating new SE 3rd Gen with physical SIM, TracFone says IMEI1 is the eSIM and won't activate??

[Vortex03]

Transferring a number to a new SE3 (purchased from Apple) and want to use a physical TFW SIM and not activate an eSIM right now as I want to keep the eSIM open for international travel. I inserted a new TFW SIM and turning on the phone and under Settings, the 'PHYSICAL SIM' shows as TFW 53.0, and shows the IMEI and physical SIM number. Down lower shows an IMEI2 as available.

When setting up the phone, the TF website gives me the option to choose physical or eSIM and I chose physical and went through the process of entering in all of the numbers correctly. It consistently gives me an error stating that I entered in the eSIM IMEI number. I know this is not the case. How do any of you recommend I proceed? I prefer not to chat or call but will if I have to....

[tomseys]

I have 2 Apple iPhone SE3s that I activated on TF/Verizon a few months ago. I did them a month apart.

Initially tried to activate them using the chat but the reps were unable to do it because the system would not allow them to pair the sim number with the SE3s IMEI. Tried different sims.

Called the Tracfone corporate office and same thing. Finally after some calls this "system error" was escalated to an offline network support specialist who manually paired the sim with IMEI. Took a while.

Tf corporate office number is 305 640-2000 x1029

[SlowLoris]

Just adding that I also had trouble activating a Verizon BYOP SIM on an iPhone SE 2022 from the Apple Store last summer. Online activation kept getting an error message, though not the same as yours. When calling corporate the agent advised her to use the T-Mobile SIM from the 3 pack (which we thought was odd, since there is such a push to move everyone to Verizon).

[fv22652]

Vortex03,

The iPhone SE 2022 supports dual esim, so you can have two esims active at the same time. OR you can have one physical sim and one esim active at the same time.

You can have a multiple esims (more than two), but only two can be active at the same time.

Eric

[Vortex03]

Thank you for the replies. Alex sent me a PM as well.

This is my daughter’s phone and she is going to be doing international travel and also study abroad. When I explained to
her about esims and how she can get prepaid plans at her destinations….let’s just say it didn’t go over well. We shall see…

[Vortex03]

As a follow-up, we ported her number out of Tracfone and activated the new SE3 on a Verizon prepaid account. It took less than 10 minutes in the store start to finish.