I got my dad an Aldi Talk prepaid SIM card and activated the SIM card on Medionmobile.de:

https://www.medionmobile.de/registrierung/ (After the registration has been completed, you need to fill out the form and submit it online. Your SIM card is activated shortly afterward.

@Bisbetica, The form is in German but the terms are not too hard to figure out. Ask us if you need a translation.

While living in Germany I bought a Blau.de SIM. I haven't been anything less than happy with it. Considering I was living there for some time dealing with Vodafone rates. :censored: I even lost my PIN and caused my SIM to lock and I needed my PUK. Which was lost too. I called their tech support, and although I speak German, they also spoke English and found my PUK.

Isn't someone selling a German SIM in the buy/sell forum?

we could try to get blau.de SIM-cards.

They are the only ones i found where i can add a international adress as the sim-card owner.
But they all deliver only to germany - so if someone buys it i'd have to get the card first and forward it to the destination afterwards.

Together with that i could offer a Calling Card that works with this SIM-card and gives you USA for 22 ct per minute (charged by second).

Registered air mail for example to the USA would cost around 7$

Chris

It really comes down to a variety of factors that might be different for everybody admitedly...

I purchased my vodafone.de for relatively little money before united mobile and since I pop through Germany for a few days every half year, have decided despite united mobile to keep it active (its validity is 9 months with a top up)..although it is somewhat more expensive in my case to receive forwarded calls on a German (or most other European networks) than on united mobile, I still prefer using the local network as being more reliable (although I must say my connections to Liechtenstein recently via my ld carrier on call forwarding have been very clear and very reliable; the question of course remains how long will the ld carrier keep 10?/minute USA to Liechtenstein or cbw keep 14?/minute via pin2dest..)

Having said all that, I now use bizon calling card for calls to the USA...2?/minute Germany to USA and they give you local German numbers in several cities so in reality what I pay is the local German cost on whatever plan the vodafone de is on...that meets my needs...may not meet other needs.

The other advantage to me of vodafone and it was very important was the ability to get the English voice prompts which I have and the fact that if it is impo0rtant enough to keep the number I can top up with vodafone vouchers in other countries.

I also added vodafone passport (which is called something else in German) for free although since I have other alternatives I don't particularly use it all that much except to use up some of the top ups that I have paid for anyway.

So for me, the most important thing was the ability to get English language prompts; something I would assume is not available on most of the other German networks even though it might be somewhat cheaper.

I'm surprised by that, as my Vodafone DE SIM is registered at my UK address. The non-network shop did it online for me, and it even had a UK postcode database on the German site

yes, if you personally buy the SIM in a shop its no problem at all.
but not for delivery somewhere around the world. :)

Chris

Question...

Aren't German sim cards required to be registered even on PAYG?

The other question not a big deal, I can't remove the pin protection from the Vodafone DE sim card namely when I turn the phone on it asks for a pin code...in every other case I can disable this...can't to it with vodafone DE...wonder if this is a vodafone DE thing or a German thing.

As for the PIN, it can be turned off on some of my Vodafone SIMs, but not all of them. Older ones in particular do not allow this.

At present, Quelle stores are offering a Vodafone SIM with 12.50 ? credit for 5 ? or with a Sagem my100X for 10 ? (also with 12.50 ? credit). This is about the cheapest SIM I have seen in Germany.

Yes they are.
Thats why its not so easy just to buy a prepaid-card and hand it over to a 3rd person because it needs to re-register the card which in some cases is expensive to do.

Chris