Galaxy S23 pre-orders at T-Mobile see some customers’ SIMs move to the unshipped device

Ben Schoon | Feb 8 2023 - 8:29 am PT

The Galaxy S23 series formally releases next week, and pre-orders are available now with some nice perks, especially through carriers. But some T-Mobile customers have run into issues with a Galaxy S23 pre-order, seeing their cell service unexpectedly moving to the unshipped smartphone.

A growing number of reports on Reddit and via T-Mobile’s support forums shows a trend where customers who have pre-ordered a Galaxy S23, S23+, or Galaxy S23 Ultra through the carrier have seen their active cell service disabled, followed by an email from T-Mobile saying that their service had moved to a new SIM card.

Understandably, especially given some recent attacks on T-Mobile MVNOs, some customers thought this to be a SIM swap attack. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Rather, it seems T-Mobile and/or Samsung is mistakenly activating service on the pre-ordered phones of these customers, thus moving it away from the phone the customer is actively using. However, with the phone not yet having shipped, this obviously isn’t a good thing.

This issue is happening for orders placed through Samsung.com, but it does seem that T-Mobile might be aware of the problem. An alleged internal document published by The Mobile Report shows that T-Mobile is informing representatives of the issue and confirming that is not a case of fraud. Rather, Samsung is mistakenly activating the eSIM on these new devices, and that the process can be reversed by customer support. Several customers report success with working with customer support on the matter.

Pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S23 series are open now. Buyers get a $100 credit with their pre-order, and an additional $50 by clicking our special link here. Samsung is offering trade-in values up to $750. We’ve also broken down carrier deals here so you can get the best value.