PrePaidGSM.net Forum (Archived) - View Single Post

NFH · 26-01-2014, 13:56

I went to Barcelona for two nights this week, so I went to Movistar's largest shop in Barcelona at Plaça de Catalunya to buy a SIM card. Before travelling, I had tried to phone the shop at least thirty times but they never answered the phone; I expected a telephone company to be better at using telephones. When I got there, they sent me to the local tourism office, which was oddly located upstairs on the first floor of the Movistar shop. They had sold out of SIM cards and sent me back downstairs. I was then told that the entire shop (despite being the largest in Barcelona) was out of stock of Movistar nano-SIMs and that in any case they refuse to supply nano-SIMs to prepaid customers. The guy suggested Tuenti but they were out of stock of Tuenti SIM cards too. I had been considering Movistar rather than Tuenti (also owned by Telefonica) because of the short duration of my stay and I didn't want to buy a whole gigabyte. Anyway, the guy then sent me across Plaça de Catalunya to Fnac, where there is another Movistar shop upstairs, but there was luckily a girl on the ground floor selling Tuenti SIM cards at a temporary stall. I therefore bought a SIM card for €12. She was extremely helpful and gave me detailed instructions on how to set up my online login to specifically the mobile section of Tuenti's web site. Without these instructions, I would have struggled as it was far from obvious how to do this, and I would have probably only set up a profile on Tuenti's social network. It was not possible to opt out of the 1GB initial bundle and pay €0.0363/MB from the outset and I eventually used 200MB during my entire stay, which would have cost the same at the pay-as-you-go rate. SIP services seemed to be blocked. The balance, after buying the 1GB bundle for €7.26, was €4.74. This means that the €2 higher cost of buying the SIM card in a shop (€12) compared to online (€10) is reflected directly in €2 more additional credit.

As many iPhone users know, when you put a SIM card into an iPhone anywhere in the world, it sends an SMS to Apple's iMessage and FaceTime activation servers which are hosted by Vodafone UK on eleven possible numbers, +44 7786 205094 and +44 7537 4102*1 (where * can be any digit). Although many networks suppress charges for these activation SMS in their SMSCs, Tuenti charges a whopping €0.73 for each message. If iMessage and FaceTime activation doesn't work the first time (which is often the case), your iPhone will send multiple SMS to these numbers, causing a significant balance deduction, which in my case halved my residual balance. When I queried the charges with Tuenti's e-mail support, they told me that they would refund them as a one-off but would not do so again. They even suggested to me that I should not activate iMessage and FaceTime in future - not a very helpful suggestion.

	(#7)
NFH (Offline) Senior Member Prepaid Expert Posts: 322 Join Date: 11 Apr 2012 Location: London Country:	26-01-2014, 13:56 I went to Barcelona for two nights this week, so I went to Movistar's largest shop in Barcelona at Plaça de Catalunya to buy a SIM card. Before travelling, I had tried to phone the shop at least thirty times but they never answered the phone; I expected a telephone company to be better at using telephones. When I got there, they sent me to the local tourism office, which was oddly located upstairs on the first floor of the Movistar shop. They had sold out of SIM cards and sent me back downstairs. I was then told that the entire shop (despite being the largest in Barcelona) was out of stock of Movistar nano-SIMs and that in any case they refuse to supply nano-SIMs to prepaid customers. The guy suggested Tuenti but they were out of stock of Tuenti SIM cards too. I had been considering Movistar rather than Tuenti (also owned by Telefonica) because of the short duration of my stay and I didn't want to buy a whole gigabyte. Anyway, the guy then sent me across Plaça de Catalunya to Fnac, where there is another Movistar shop upstairs, but there was luckily a girl on the ground floor selling Tuenti SIM cards at a temporary stall. I therefore bought a SIM card for €12. She was extremely helpful and gave me detailed instructions on how to set up my online login to specifically the mobile section of Tuenti's web site. Without these instructions, I would have struggled as it was far from obvious how to do this, and I would have probably only set up a profile on Tuenti's social network. It was not possible to opt out of the 1GB initial bundle and pay €0.0363/MB from the outset and I eventually used 200MB during my entire stay, which would have cost the same at the pay-as-you-go rate. SIP services seemed to be blocked. The balance, after buying the 1GB bundle for €7.26, was €4.74. This means that the €2 higher cost of buying the SIM card in a shop (€12) compared to online (€10) is reflected directly in €2 more additional credit. As many iPhone users know, when you put a SIM card into an iPhone anywhere in the world, it sends an SMS to Apple's iMessage and FaceTime activation servers which are hosted by Vodafone UK on eleven possible numbers, +44 7786 205094 and +44 7537 41021 (where can be any digit). Although many networks suppress charges for these activation SMS in their SMSCs, Tuenti charges a whopping €0.73 for each message. If iMessage and FaceTime activation doesn't work the first time (which is often the case), your iPhone will send multiple SMS to these numbers, causing a significant balance deduction, which in my case halved my residual balance. When I queried the charges with Tuenti's e-mail support, they told me that they would refund them as a one-off but would not do so again. They even suggested to me that I should not activate iMessage and FaceTime in future - not a very helpful suggestion.