I bought my Tuenti SIM in 2014 in a shop in Spain and I was not surcharged €25. This might be for those with non-EEA citizenship, but even then it would be a dubious practice.

I ordered a Tuenti card on-line last Thursday for a forthcoming trip to Spain starting this Wednesday. I gave my hotel as the delivery address. I got confirmation today that it has been delivered. €10 for 1GB. No surcharge for being a foreigner and no problem using my credit card which is not Spanish. It suggested 4-5 days delivery, and it got delivered in 4 including weekend.

A useful tip - Spanish people have two surnames - so I was able to use the additional surname field to put my arrival date as additional identity info to the Hotel! (I had to use Roman numerals for the date number - as numbers are prohibited in a name field!). The hotel said they could work off my name - but some hotels might need your arrival date as well.

In my experience, Spain has one of the most bureaucratic processes for signing foreigners up for SIMs in shops (worst place after France!). I have been embarrassed in the past at how the queue grows and grows as they try to process my circa €10 SIM purchase. I can understand that Spanish operators might want to charge a €25 surcharge to discourage foreigners from causing queues in their shops! However, it is probably illegal to discriminate against other EU citizens, so they may only get away with this charge for non-EU. Signing up online now means I don't have to find a phone shop and waste an hour trying to get a SIM.

Hi.
The article about the 25€ surcharge was based of my personal experience.

But on the WIKI, I recently received first reports about ordering the SIM online. For this, you have to send it to a Spanish postal address, as usual. This seems to be without surcharge as I've checked the ordering process. As a downside, it may not so convenient if you are not sure about your schedule or accommodation places and whether the staff will hand out your mail. Generally, this way has some disadvantages, but seems to be free right now..

Tuenti a.k.a. Telefonica has renamed Zerolimites into VOZDigital and limites or charges for this VoIP service which used to be free unlimited. But its still a good deal. Interestingly, Telefonica has not tried to introduce it to any other market, neither in Europe nor Latin America

More on part 2:

UPDATE:
I did some research on the tuenti móvil surcharge.

There is actually a pretty recent thread in their forum where this surcharge is discussed:
http://www.soportetuentimovil.com/in...p?topic=7654.0

In this thread some foreigners are telling similar stories. But the "official" statement of tuenti by the administrator in the last post gives some explanation (of course only in Spanish):

En tienda fÃ*sica y para pasaportes, las tarjetas de prepago tienen un PVP de 25€. La única tarifa por defecto que podrás tener será la de 7€ y la diferencia estará disponible en forma de saldo (18€). A partir del siguiente ciclo podrás escoger la tarifa que quieras.

Translation: In physical stores and for passports, the prepaid SIM Cards have a recommended price of 25 EUR. The only tariff option which can be chosen is the 7 EUR package and the difference is given as a balance of 18 EUR. From the following month, you can choose any tariff option you like.

So I will change the article about tuenti again. Foreigners are not overcharged. But for some mysterious reason, their choices are somewhat more limited than for Spanish nationals. By having a mandatory balance of 18 EUR, tuenti seems to force PAYG customers to stay for longer. Well, this is Spain!

My brother ordered a spanish Simyo SIM card to a hotel in Spain some time ago. The person delivering it did not want to hand it over to anybody else without seeing the original ID of the addressee. So the starter pack has been returned to the access point of the delivery company to be picked up there. As there was a weekend in between and the place was far away, he got the SIM two days before leaving.

I don't know whether the procedure is less complicated in the case of tuenti. It might depend on the person delivering the package.

thank you for so many replies.
this is bizarre. so if you buy it in the shops... they will make this difference if you are not spanish... BUT... if you buy it online it's all ok?

Just an update....I arrived in Spain yesterday evening and my Tuenti SIM card was waiting for me at my hotel. There was no problem with the delivery even though I wasn't at the hotel to receive it. I put it into the phone and it is working fine.

The only issue I have is that they seem to be blocking VOIP. My Irish VOIP service is not working over Tuenti. The Tuenti card comes with its own VOIP service - but I haven't tried using it yet. I think when I was last here in 2013 the Tuenti service allowed all VOIP. Not a major problem for me, but some users might need to know.

It's not really that strange - the length of time taken to purchase a €10 SIM card in a shop in Spain is probably about the same as signing up a new Bill-pay contract - for which they might earn €1,000 or more over the life of the contract. I suspect that a lot of the process is forced on the Operators by the Police or other Security authorities. By ordering on-line and delivering to a physical address, the police may be happy that they know where the SIM has gone - hence they don't need the lengthy procedure.

I might be wrong, but in my experience Tuenti doesn't block SIP but throttles it so heavily that it is hardly usable.

Strange...I've never heard of this €25 surcharge! Maybe I just found a good shop :)