That SIM card is yours forever

[Cory Streater]

I think it had to do with his speaker phone quality.

Yep. It echoed so badly that nobody wanted to talk to me on it. I spend a lot of time on conference calls.

Okay, I bought 2 bolts. One to flash ROM's and screw around with - the other to use as my main phone. The main phones speakerphone echoed so badly nobody wanted to talk to me on it. The other one was fine. So I went back to exchange the echoey one.

Amazing.
Don't they go for training for EVERY Smartphone they release?
At least by me they do, but they tell me they don't pay attention lol.

Why the exchange Cory? Secretly trying to get your iphone sim into the TB? LOL

*GASP* I do not have an iPhone!

 

[the one and only M]

I'm glad Verizon went the sim route. I've read prior to the lte launch that they could of went either way, sim or sim-less with the new network. It would be cool if eventually we could buy and used unlocked lte devices that support the 700 MHz band.

 

[atakin77]

Quick question about the sim card. At some point, something better will come along and I will sell my TB. How does the sim card issue get addressed if I sell it to someone who does not have a sim card?

 

[stearic]

To bad we'd still have to have a phone with the cdma 1x bands for voice as they have stated they wont' be doing voLTE until around 2020.

 

[jbomb11]

Okay, SIM is too short of a word to search for, and I couldn't find any TB threads with a SIM tag at the bottom, so don't flame the admin for a fail.

That said, I wanted to pass a little info along to you guys about our SIM cards:

When you bought your TB, they also included a SIM card. That SIM card is yours and it's attached to your line, not your phone. In fact, if you ordered online, you will notice the card was not inside the Thunderbolt packaging; it was in the box separately.

If you were to buy a second phone, for the same line, or if you did a Warranty exchange, there will not be a new SIM card in the box. They know you already have one on that line and will not send you a new one.

All you have to do is plug your existing card into the new phone and bam it works. The Verizon store employees at my local store have not been trained about this properly. They were insisting that they needed my old card back and that they would have to deactivate it and give me a new one. I knew it wasn't true, but I'm not the type to argue with someone who's just trying to do their job. But after about 10 minutes of her trying to figure out how to do the SIM card replacement and a call for help from the store manager, I asked them to please let me show that my existing card would work.

They finally agreed, and both voice and data on the new phone worked right out of the box, without them having entered a single thing into their computer. When I showed them I could browse the web, they said fine but voice will absolutely not work. Then I placed a phone call. So, this is something that would be obvious to anyone that's ever owned a GSM phone, but maybe not so much to us Verizon die hards. I seriously was very nice about it, and they remarked they were glad to learn this after having swapped cards out all week long.

It's a new technology and anyone with a Verizon mindset, including employees and customers, may still think of the way things work with CDMA. We actually laughed about it and I admitted I only knew this because I have a second Bolt (don't ask) that I had learned this on. One came with a card, the other didn't.

So if you're exchanging or plan on buying a new phone, don't be surprised if there's no SIM card in the box.

So I got my replacement th today and your wrong. They made me get a new sim card. Which is bs cause a VZW rep told me I could use the same one.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

 

[JediJesus95]

Nice thing is that verizon is giving away sim cards. I'm moving my tbolt to a different line and verizon shipped me a new card free.

 

[dbdynsty25]

I know for a fact that you don't need a new sim card to change devices. My story:

I paid full retail for the TB on release date (just charged it to my account so I could test it out without paying 650 bucks) and decided I really liked it so I added a line and paid 200 for the TB. I transferred my old crappy flip phone I keep on hand for instances like these, and took my SIM out of my retail TB and put it in the new one when I got it this afternoon. Voila...everything works perfectly. Now I get to return my retail TB and enjoy the new one.

 

[Cory Streater]

So I got my replacement th today and your wrong. They made me get a new sim card. Which is bs cause a VZW rep told me I could use the same one.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

Right. They tried to make me as well (out of ignorance). It was only after I demonstrated to them that it works without a new one, did they realize that they were wrong. So did they make you for technical reasons (as in you stuck your existing one in in the phone and it wouldn't work?), or did they just say you must get a new one?

 

[jim302]

To bad we'd still have to have a phone with the cdma 1x bands for voice as they have stated they wont' be doing voLTE until around 2020.

They have already made the first successful VoLTE test call, so I think they will be using LTE for voice service well before 2020. Somewhere, I read that the LG Revolution will ship with VoLTE this year. Once the LTE network is debugged and reliable, there's really no reason to hold the technology back.

The 2020 date sounds more like when they would plan to discontinue the existing CDMA2000 (1x) voice service (if they keep it that long... I would be surprised if they do).

 

[jbomb11]

They made me get a new one without trying to use it. Other thing when I send a text to someone now my phone number doesn't show a completely random thirteen digit number does.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

 

[stearic]

They have already made the first successful VoLTE test call, so I think they will be using LTE for voice service well before 2020. Somewhere, I read that the LG Revolution will ship with VoLTE this year. Once the LTE network is debugged and reliable, there's really no reason to hold the technology back.

The 2020 date sounds more like when they would plan to discontinue the existing CDMA2000 (1x) voice service (if they keep it that long... I would be surprised if they do).

That would be great if we could be using voLTE before 2020. That does sound like a bad idea though to wait until then to go with it. Maybe they were talking regular dumb phones moving over at that time? I do remember them also talking about voLTE on smartphones a year or 2 after they had fully setup their 4G network country wide.

 

[jim302]

They made me get a new one without trying to use it. Other thing when I send a text to someone now my phone number doesn't show a completely random thirteen digit number does.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

I guess they never even bothered to read the owners manual for the phone which says the SIM can be used in any VZW 4G LTE certified device, and that it is not tied to the individual phone.

Then again, I talked to someone in "technical support" a few weeks ago about a BlackBerry Internet Service issue and they didn't know who Research In Motion was (the second time I have run across that issue)... so nothing surprises me.

I don't know if some of the employees are not trained properly, or if they just don't pay attention in training. It would be nice to think that everyone would have enough interest in their job to learn about what they are selling or working with regardless of training, but that just isn't always going to be the case.

To be fair, I have dealt with plenty of knowledgeable people at Verizon stores and on the phone, so in the end, it all depends on who you deal with. Just a matter of luck.

 

[project.in.process]

They made me get a new one without trying to use it. Other thing when I send a text to someone now my phone number doesn't show a completely random thirteen digit number does.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

it's not a random 13 digit number, it's actually a number assigned to the phone

menu>settings>about phone>Phone Identity (the 13 or 16 digit number should match one of the numbers shown in this menu)

originally i thought it was the SIM ID, but it's another number that's stored on your phone.

a simple battery pull (and sometimes SIM card pull, too) has fixed this number from appearing on texts, try it out.

 

[htowngator]

Do you think that you'll be able to buy a new Bionic, for example, and it will activate on your old SIM? I'd say yes, but what if they have tiered data at that point for new activations?

Anyone? Bueler?

 

[Astromech]

So when i exchanged my bolt for a new one on wed i enjoyed watching for 10 minutes and three employees try and activate a new sim card for me before the manager told them i was to keep the same one. Having read this thread i already knew what was going to happen. I had the time so i was mildly amused.

 

[stearic]

Do you think that you'll be able to buy a new Bionic, for example, and it will activate on your old SIM? I'd say yes, but what if they have tiered data at that point for new activations?

Yes, you will be able to just use your old sim. As for the tiered data, that i don't know.

 

[berdinkerdickle]

I know this is an old thread, but I searched SIM, and this was the perfect thread.
I just bought a used TB off ebay.
I stuck my SIM from my broken TB in it, and it was just like when I was on At&t, just swap the SIM and you're up and running.
I didn't know this, so I searched and found this thread.