[Croatia] Vipme account validity

[sakr]

Dear Colleagues,

For more than 2 years I owe a registered Croatian Vipme sim which I use virtually once a year, during my summer holidays in beautiful Croatia. Currently on the account is 126HRK and the validity for outgoing calls expires today.
I hope somebody with a good practical experience with Vip will be able to answer the following questions:
1. What happens with the credit I don't reacharge it today? Will it be immediately lost, or is there any specific amount of time till I REALLY have to recharge my sim?
2.Has anyone managed to buy a Vip recharge online using their webshop and paying by a foreign credit card? At least it doesn't work for my case, saying (in Croatian) that the deteails of my credit card are incorrect.
3. Does anyone know any working way to recharge Vipme account from abroad using a foreign credit card?

Luckily I was aware of the problems with recharging my sim online from abroad, so just before leaving Croatia I have purhased in an ATM 2 recharge vouchers, 100kuna each. If I won't get any helpful infromation today I will make use of one of them.

Regards,
Lukasz

[dilijasi]

Hello Lukasz
let's try to help you out here shall we?
1. Vipnet follows the 180+270 rule, i.e. a top up of 100Kn will give you 180 days of SIM validity (which for you expires today right), followed by 270 days of inactive period (can't call or text, receive text only) after which they shutdown your SIM in case you don't top up. Should that happen (unlike the EU, the top up credit is NOT transferable to another SIM) you will lose your hard earned dough, simple as that. Based on what you said, I think you're safe for nine more months, if I were you I would wait with the top up.
2. I have never tried it with Vipnet but can tell you that for instance I wasn't able to do the same with Italian Vodafone SIM - my credit card (issued in Croatia) was declined when tried to buy the voucher online.
3. What don't you try a stupid method: you live in Poland right, and there the Voda partner should be the Polkomtel. Ask if it's possible to use their top up vouchers for Vipnet (I know that it works with Voda Italy). Try also Ebay.

Cheers,
Davor

[sakr]

Hello Davor,

Thanks a lot for this really quick response!

Actually the top-up of 100Kn gives 150 days of account validity for outgoing calls.
From this what you are saying it seems that I won't loose my current credit (126Kn) and I should be able to top-up my account using a voucher (that I already have) just before summer holidays. This should result in the account value of 126+100Kn and another 150 days of account validity, starting on the day of the nearest top-up, right?
The declinement of payments made by foreign credit cards unfortunatelly is quite common for many mobile operators. I have the same story with Ukrainian Kyivstar.
There seems to be nothing sold on ebay at the moment... Is there any local sort of ebay service in Croatia?
The Vip official website mentions about the possibility of using foreign Vodafone vouchers to top-up Croatian Vip, however Polish Polkomtel (operator of Plus network) is not on the list, mostly the "pure" Vodafone networks are there. There seems to be also some fee for such a top-up.

[dilijasi]

Exactly, u will NOT lose current credit provided you do a top up again just before the 9 months of inactivity period is due. Doing so u reactivate the account and also the credit you had frozen during SIM inactivity period. Since no Polish operator vouchers could be used and there's no offers on Ebay to top up Vipnet I could start a small business of offering Croatian networks' vouchers online which should work rather well given the number of tourists such as urself who visit Croatia once a year for summer holidays.
There is a classified ads online site Njuskalo.hr oglasnik but don't think it's of use 2 u because private sellers can't accept credit card payments from abroad and I'm not sure if Paypal or similar services offer to receive payments in Croatia.

[sakr]

OK, I will give it a try and postpone the today's recharge till the summer holidays.
I wouldn't bet on the success of that sort of business . Please bear in mind that during the summer period it's quite easy to get a new sim for 10 or 25Kn (with that or simmilar money already on the account), so for the majority of tourists it might be much better to buy a new sim each year and not to bother about keeping it alive for the whole year. I would have done the same if my current account was empty .
Because I expect to spend at least 200Kn on mobile serives this summer in Croatia, for me there is a point in recharging my sim. As a registered user I also get some bonuses from Vip for each top-up.
Thanks for the link!

[sakr]

I got a text today saying (in Croatian): "Rok uporabe Vipme racuna je istekao. Iducih 270 dana mozete primati pozive i SMS-ove. Za reaktivaciju racuna, molimo obnovite ga. Ako vec jeste, zanemarite ovaj SMS."
As far as I understood it says that my Vipme account has expired. In the following 270 days I may only receive calls and texts. In order to reactivate my account I should recharge it.
After checking my ballance by pressing *101# I get an informatiotion that all the funds are still there, so nothing is lost sofar.
Anyway good news for me - no need to recharge my Vipme sim in order to keep it alive and not to loose my current ballance. 100Kn once a year seems to be more than enough.