iMessage Facetime not working after switching to Virgin

[BL1984]

Hi

I have recently switched from EE to Virgin and iMessage/Facetime do not work. Brand new phone and contract through Virgin.  iMessage/Facetime worked fine before porting number over.

I have done all the trouble shooting via Apple and the iPhone is fine.

Tried all usual Virgin trouble shooting from forums like signing out iCloud, removing sim, resetting phone.

Making sure international call barring is removed, spending cap increased, no holds or restrictions on account.

The problem is that I cannot send a text message "help" to 48369 which is required by Apple to authorise iMessage/Facetime.

Virgin do not do esim either so I can't just get them to switch from physical to esim and see if that helps resolve it! 

I have been on live chat for hours, multiple phone calls to support (one just hung up on me after saying take the phone to a store?). No one at support could not help. 

I was promised a call back from 2nd line support on Monday which hasn't happened.  Very poor service

If it cannot be resolved I'll have to just cancel the contract and switch to another provider.

It seems to have a common issue online and there aren't any clear resolutions anywhere? 

[Cardiffman282]

Another OP was in the same predicament. This is their resolved post:

had the same issue - unable to activate iMessage and FaceTime after moving from EE to Virgin. Apple pointed me towards Virgin to check that the international SMS setting were correct. I checked on my account that roaming was enabled. It was but I decided to toggle it (off/on) then went back to my iPhone toggled iMessage and FaceTime in similar fashion and they registered straight away.

[BL1984]

Thank you. I have just tried that, left it a couple hours before toggling back but I still cannot message 48369.

Very frustrating that Virgin are supplying iPhones and cannot enable the core functionalities. 

I requested an esim to see if that helped because I saw some posts of a user getting a sim replacement that solved it. But they don't do esim even though every other network does now.

[BL1984]

ok so this did fix it! 

Thank you.

For other users reference, I still cannot message "HELP" to 48369 which Apple advised was required.  

BUT after turning international call barring off then back on again, I can enable iMessage and FaceTime from settings on iOS

[Gareth_L]

Hello BL1984.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Sorry we got here to late to be able to help.

Thank you so much for popping the fix on this post.

It will help anyone else that may be experiencing the same issue as you were.

While you are on here, Can we please ask if you need help with anything else at all?

Gareth_L