Lidl

[inquisitor]

Welcome. For the referral please use the following number: 017639737800

Internet access in other EU countries is charged with € 0.15/100KB and so is prohibitively expensive. Lidl also have a "EU Internet-Tages-Pack" (EU Internet daypack) which gives you 10MB for € 3 per day while roaming in the EU. But this tariff is only active if you are subscribed to the "Handy-Internet-Paket", which is the smaller monthly flatrate for € 8.99/month throttled after 500MB. So if you seek cheaper data rates in other EU countries you are forced to subscribe to the smaller monthly flatrate. If you subscribe to the larger 5GB-flatrate you won't get the "EU Internet-Tages-Pack". Btw if you consume those 10MB abroad Internet access while roaming is suspended until the next day and there's no way to renew this pack on the same day. Perhaps you should just relinquish Internet access during your day trip to Austria.

[thermos]

Dear inquisitor,

Thanks for your advice. I will ask my friend to ship the sim card to me and I will follow your mentioned steps to activate it online 4 to 5 weeks before my trip with your number in friend referral to make both of us can have 5 euro bonus. Once I have activated the sim card successfully, I will let you know then.

Cheers
Have a nice weekend

[veeRob]

I am having some problems and I'm hoping inquisitor or someone else can help me.

I followed all of the directions in this thread and bought a 10 euro Lidl SIM when I was in Munich to put in a cheap Nokia phone my friend gave me in Czech Republic. I activated it with the -7800 referral #, and everything worked great. I made and received calls in Munich.

After Munich, I went to Italy, and I could no longer send SMS's. Incoming SMS's arrived fine, but when I sent one I got the error "Check Operator Services." I thought maybe it was an Italian problem, so I didn't worry until I got to Slovenia and had the same issue. I am now in Croatia and the problem continues.

Any idea what my problem might be? I topped off with an extra 15 euro credit, and I received my 5 euro referral credit, so I have something like 25 euro in my account. It would be really annoying if I threw that extra 15 euro away.

Thanks in advance.

[inquisitor]

I haven't faced such a problem yet. Can you place and receive calls?

[veeRob]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

I haven't faced such a problem yet. Can you place and receive calls?

Yes, calls work just fine.

[inquisitor]

What number(s) are you sending your texts to? Is this definitely a mobile number? Do you use the correct international format? Have you tried sending a text to your own number?

Also you could try power-cycling your phone, make sure the number of the SMS center is correct (+491760000443) and lastly manually select another network (usually you can roam on multiple network abroad).

[veeRob]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

What number(s) are you sending your texts to? Is this definitely a mobile number? Do you use the correct international format? Have you tried sending a text to your own number?

Also you could try power-cycling your phone, make sure the number of the SMS center is correct (+491760000443) and lastly manually select another network (usually you can roam on multiple network abroad).

Yes, definitely a mobile number as the first person I tried to SMS was a reply from an incoming SMS. I've also tried typing in #'s in various formats and none work.

I actually don't think I've power cycled the phone since I left Germany. Just did so, but I don't want to test it right now as I'm in Croatia and the SMS charges are very high. I will try again on Monday when I'm back in EU (Budapest). Thank you.

If that doesn't work, I will try selecting another network as I found the menu option for that. I don't see any menu option for the SMS center number... there's an option under Messages that says "Service com. editor" -- is that it? There was no number entered when I went into that setting.

Thank you so much for your help. Hopefully I can fix this when I get to Budapest.

[inquisitor]

A warning to everybody planning to purchase a Lidl SIM: Fonic, the company behind the Lidl tariff, have recently started sending out letters to the address provided during activation in order to confirm registration details. It is understood that Fonic temporarily disable SIM cards if the confirmation letter returns due to undeliverableness until a valid address has been provided. So when activating a Lidl SIM make sure you use an address to which the confirmation letter will be successfully delivered (e.g. a hotel or a friend temporarily attaching your name to his mailbox).

[inquisitor]

P.S.: This applies to new activations only. Existing customers are not affected.

[kuba.g]

Any idea if this is due to some (new) law in Germany which imposes the duty on the operators to do a little check-up on their clients?
I cannot imagine why any operators would want to do this themselves...?