New phone - invalid sim message

GKL

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I bought a brand new unopened phone online, after trying more than one sim (to be sure it wasn't a bad sim) still get the "invalid sim" message.

The ATT store said it's not a common problem, but it can happen that a brand new phone is defective so it won't read the sim card.

I put in a return request to ship the phone back and get a refund and buying a new one from a different seller.

Anyone ever have a new phone be defective so it won't read the sim card ?
 
Was the sim card tried from the AT&T store, or an old sim card you had? If from them, phone is probably messed up. If your old sim card, could be a messed up sim card.

Ps...since ATT quit doing the Iphone upgrades with a new 2 year contract, I'm going to be droppping them as soon as my contract is up. I've been with them over 10 years and they were decently priced for upgrading every 2 years to a new Iphone - even though their call/data plans were a little higher than most.

But now, their plan costs are too high compared with competitors and you have to either buy an Iphone outright or through that dumb "ATT next plan junk" where you rent the phone...:my2cents: Screw a whole bunch of that!
 
Was the sim card tried from the AT&T store, or an old sim card you had? If from them, phone is probably messed up. If your old sim card, could be a messed up sim card.

Ps...since ATT quit doing the Iphone upgrades with a new 2 year contract, I'm going to be droppping them as soon as my contract is up. I've been with them over 10 years and they were decently priced for upgrading every 2 years to a new Iphone - even though their call/data plans were a little higher than most.

But now, their plan costs are too high compared with competitors and you have to either buy an Iphone outright or through that dumb "ATT next plan junk" where you rent the phone...:my2cents: Screw a whole bunch of that!

Well my old phone (an android smartphone) used a micro-sim card and the new phone I bought from an independent reseller (a Nokia Lumia 2015 windows phone branded as ATT) needed a nano-sim card which is a smaller sim card so I couldn't just move the old sim card.

I tried 4 sim cards from ATT, the first 2 were shipped to me as no ATT store is close by, after that I went to the ATT store and they tried 2 more sim cards and my new phone still wouldn't read them so after 4 sims they said it had to be a defective sim reader in the phone as it is unlikely all those sim cards would be defective.

The aggravating part is when they first tried to activate the first sim in my new phone, it disconnected my old phone from the network and they said it was impossible to reconnect the old phone so I'll be without a phone till I get another new phone that should be okay, after all what are the odds of getting 2 defective phones in a row ?

I'm with ATT but not under any contract, I use their GoPhone plan where I pay $25 a month for unlimited calls and unlimited text.

I could pay more for unlimited data, but most of the time I'm around wifi and rarely would need data.
 
Well my old phone (an android smartphone) used a micro-sim card and the new phone I bought from an independent reseller (a Nokia Lumia 2015 windows phone branded as ATT) needed a nano-sim card which is a smaller sim card so I couldn't just move the old sim card.

I tried 4 sim cards from ATT, the first 2 were shipped to me as no ATT store is close by, after that I went to the ATT store and they tried 2 more sim cards and my new phone still wouldn't read them so after 4 sims they said it had to be a defective sim reader in the phone as it is unlikely all those sim cards would be defective.

The aggravating part is when they first tried to activate the first sim in my new phone, it disconnected my old phone from the network and they said it was impossible to reconnect the old phone so I'll be without a phone till I get another new phone that should be okay, after all what are the odds of getting 2 defective phones in a row ?

I'm with ATT but not under any contract, I use their GoPhone plan where I pay $25 a month for unlimited calls and unlimited text.

I could pay more for unlimited data, but most of the time I'm around wifi and rarely would need data.

Yeah, 4 cards then it's the phone. Sucks to be out a phone because they had to cancel to transfer, hopefully you can send the other back fast and get a good turn around.
 
Yeah, 4 cards then it's the phone. Sucks to be out a phone because they had to cancel to transfer, hopefully you can send the other back fast and get a good turn around.

AT&T has competitors? They're the greatest!

Well the phone was bought from a reseller on ebay that had high ratings, but I'm just asking a refund from them as I knew it would take longer to get a replacement from them and I couldn't be without a phone that long, so Saturday I ordered the same model phone from a reseller on Amazon and it will arrive Monday thanks to the free prime shipping we get from Amazon from my wife being a college student.

The phone, a Nokia Lumia 1520 was last sold by ATT not too long ago but not now as it's a discontinued model (I I guess so they can sell the newer 950 model) but there's still new 1520s available from resellers at a lot lower price than the newer 950 model. Just months ago you would have had to pay about $585 for a 1520 from ATT without a contract (I use non-contract GoPhone service) now you can get them as low as around $200 with no contract from resellers.

The Lumia 2015 has high customer ratings, I saw about 4.2 stars out of 5 so I know it's a good phone, I guess I just happened to get a lemon, this might be the first time (or maybe second) I ever had to send something back I bought online, a lot better than Walmart, I had several purchases over the years I had to return to Walmart :lol:
 
I have an cheap Microsoft Lumia phone. Like $20 with the pay as you go T-mobile plan. Pretty much just an emergency use phone. That thing used to give me an invalid sim message all the time. Would work for a bit and than just spit out the messge. Would turn it on and off and sometime it would work and others not so much. Did a google search on it and found out the sim card may not be making a good connection inside the phone. Folded a little piece of paper in half and put it on top the sim under the little bracket that holds it down. (same concept as the quarter under the battery cap for the Pro Pointer that helps with falsing) Not had a problem since.
 
I have an cheap Microsoft Lumia phone. Like $20 with the pay as you go T-mobile plan. Pretty much just an emergency use phone. That thing used to give me an invalid sim message all the time. Would work for a bit and than just spit out the messge. Would turn it on and off and sometime it would work and others not so much. Did a google search on it and found out the sim card may not be making a good connection inside the phone. Folded a little piece of paper in half and put it on top the sim under the little bracket that holds it down. (same concept as the quarter under the battery cap for the Pro Pointer that helps with falsing) Not had a problem since.

Thanks for that info, you would think a brand new phone would not have that problem right out of the box, especially a phone that originally sold for about $585.

If I would have known that yesterday before I ordered a replacement phone I could have given it a try, but Amazon ships fast and my replacement phone is already on it's way, but at least I'll have that info in case that problem ever happens again.
 
My dad had the same problem with his Galaxy 5 Grand Prime. He went through three SIM cards and got the same "invalid SIM" message each time. Finally Samsung sent him a new phone and that one seems to be working.

According to the person he spoke with at Samsung, the SIM card thing is a "common issue."

But your phone isn't a Samsung so apparently it's a problem that a lot of phones have. My LG had that issue once as well.
 
My dad had the same problem with his Galaxy 5 Grand Prime. He went through three SIM cards and got the same "invalid SIM" message each time. Finally Samsung sent him a new phone and that one seems to be working.

According to the person he spoke with at Samsung, the SIM card thing is a "common issue."

But your phone isn't a Samsung so apparently it's a problem that a lot of phones have. My LG had that issue once as well.

Thanks for letting me know that Gabby !

At least that gives me confidence my replacement phone should work okay, after all, what are the odds I would get 2 defective phones in a row especially when the replacement phone is from a different seller.

I just got a message from the ebay reseller a few minutes ago not only agreeing to refund me after the defective phone is returned, but gave me a pre-paid return label to print out so it won't cost me anything to return it.

I ordered another Nokia Lumia 1520 from an Amazon seller as they ship fast, I ordered it Saturday and it will be here Monday !

The ATT store I went to tried more than one sim so they said it had to be a defective phone.

While they were working on it the employee also opened the tray next to sim tray saying what is this ?, oh, it's a memory card.

Then a few minutes later they looked on the floor and said "I thought I dropped something", but couldn't find anything. I was so focused on hoping they could get my phone to work I didn't think much about it.

Then when I got home and was going to take my memory card out knowing I had to send the phone back, it wasn't there, later that day after my wife got home I used her phone to call them and tell them what happened the regional manger who happened to answer the phone looked for it and when he couldn't find it agreed to make up for the cost of replacing it with agreeing to give me a $25 credit in my GoPhone account (the memory card was $25.35) so they were decent to work with.

Now as far as some of the ATT people I talked to they said a defective sim reader in a brand new phone can happen, but they said it's not real common for new phones, so I guess that just happened to be their experience so far at that location.

Maybe that Samsung model had a design flaw that made it more common than what normally might be expected.
 
I saw thru online tracking that my replacement phone made it to my local post office very early this morning so I called and had them do a "hold for pickup" before the carrier left the post office so I wouldn't have to wait till late afternoon when our mail usually arrives.

I put the same sim in my replacement phone that the phone I sent back couldn't read and it worked great ! So that is further confirmation that it was indeed a defective phone and not the sim card itself.

Needless to say I am one very happy camper !!!!!

Tonight would have made 7 days without a usable phone (and we don't have a landline) so it is nice to be able to make and receive phone calls again on my own phone and not have to wait till my wife got home to use her phone.

It is something how dependent we have become on technology, and to think it wasn't all that far in the past when people got by without electricity !
 
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