Try contacting customer care for the missing bonus and the forum admins for correcting your post above.
Since both of your SIMs received the bonus it seems like the referral between your first and second SIM did work. Otherwise your second SIM would not have gotten any bonus as it was not involved in the first referral. So the issue seems to be with the activation of your first SIM. Unfortunately I can't say what's wrong. But as I have neither reached the limit of 5 bonuses this month nor last month, it's not caused by too many referrals on my part.

Done .....

Thanks!

And I received a reply from Fonic to my query last night: the reason was that there were already 5 Friendship bonuses for the month on the number given during the activation.
Seems they should let the new customer and the know that fact during sign-up.
Now I have to buy a 20 Euro voucher, since they don't offer anything less than that.

That's strange as I received only two bonuses during October and none in November.

Very strange! I received another email, saying that I did receive the bonus, but the other person (you) did not, because of the cutoff after 5 bonuses.

This makes no sense, since then the bonus for my daughter's number is missing, and she did receive her bonus. I know for a fact I did not get 5 other people signed up.
I've written them again, and will see what they say.

If you provide a German bank account to Lidl/Fonic you can request your remaining credit to be cashed out by bank transfer at any time on their website. So if you are forced to top up more credit than actually required you can get that amount back. Btw after doing this your SIM will still remain active and you can recharge it if you ever need it again.

Thanks! I don't have a German bank account, and my parents don't want theirs given out.

Anyway, I received another reply from fonic. They keep changing where the bonus actually came from:
*******************
Eine erneute Prüfung Ihres Anliegens hat ergeben, dass der Bonus, den Sie bisher erhalten haben, von der Freundschaftswerbung Ihrer Tochter stammt. Dies kann man am gleichen Zeitpunkt erkennen.
Die Freundschaftswerbung des anderen Werbers konnte auch Ihnen nicht gewährt werden, weil der Werber, wie bereits beschrieben, im Oktober schon 5 Personen geworben hatte. Aus diesem Grund haben auch Sie den Bonus nicht erhalten.
********************
But I guess they've had enough of my questions and gave me the bonus anyhow. ;)
Not sure why they would say you were over the limit of 5, when they only gave you 2 for October. Maybe they will trickle in later?

You mean, the card doesn't get deactivated after a certain amount of time? That would be fantastic! I'm a little tired of hunting down a new sim for each trip to Germany! :)

I purchased a lidl sim from lidl on my last trip in August. What a deal. I did however make the fatal mistake of not ensuring that my day flat data rate took effect, and I went through my credit value quickly on the volume base billing.....

Strange because I followed directions to do so, and even replied ja.

Inquisitor, is there anyway to ensure I'm on the day flat rate through the tonic website?

Unfortunately tariff changes made by SMS still sometimes take ages or even don't take effect at all.
The most reliable way to check and switch data options is through Fonic's website, where you'll find the data options under "Tarif-Optionen" (see screenshot below). Your current data tariff is tagged with "aktiv" and you can switch to alternative data options through the "Aktivieren" button.

http://www.abload.de/img/lidl_tarifauswahlsjlzz.png

Thanks inquisitor!

Do you have any idea if I can use the lidl sims for data on an iPad 2?

I can cut the sim to micro sim siz (already done it for my iPhone 4s).

Would be nice to have data for my iPad 2 as well

You can use a Lidl SIM on an iPad but you will have to cut the SIM yourself. They do not offer microSIMs yet.

i did chop my lidl sim into a microsim, worked fine in the ipad2, just be sure to change the APN... actually come to think of it you can put whaever you want in APN and it still seems to work for some reason.... :o

be careful when you head home thou, the SIM has roaming active and seems to gobble 80cents or so sending some sort of SMS back home to germany gobbling up some of your credit

even if you do have to buy 20euro voucher, use 15 on data, stick the SIM in a phone and make phone calls with the remaining 5euro

O2 Germany (including Lidl) have tweaked their network so you can always establish an internet connection, no matter what APN you've entered. However you have to set and/or activate an (random) APN on your phone.

According to Lidl's latest tariff list (p. 2) outgoing SMS while roaming cost € 0.13 within Europe and € 0.39 outside of Europe. Incoming SMS are free of charge worldwide.

Hi, I am a newbie here to this forum.

I will have a trip to Munich and Berlin at Jun for around 9 days. Is it the best option to buy the Lidl SIMs if i need to call home and surf the internet sometimes from my phone ?
I've read the posts that I can get a €5 bonus from the referral program, is it true ?
I found that there is a Lidl supermarket near my hotel, is it easy to get one there ?

This is the 1st time I travel to Germany, thanks.

Since Lidl charges calls to Hong Kong with € 0.99/min you should consider buying a blauworld SIM card which offers calls to Hong Kong for € 0.01/min (landlines) and € 0.05/min (mobiles) plus a call setup fee of € 0.15 per successful call (Cheap international mobile calls and SMS with blauworld). The underlying eplus network isn't the best for data but you should still get 1 MBit/s where HSDPA is available and if you want cheap rates to Hong Kong you don't have an alternative anyway.

Blauworld SIM cards are available at the following retailers:
ReiseBank, PTT-SHOP, SATURN, E-Plus, expert, EURONICS, NORMA, Conrad, klein, mobilcom-debitel-Shop, real,- und KAUFLAND

Blauworld also offers a data flatrate with throttling after 250MB for € 7.90 (Handy-Surf-Flat: Unbegrenztes mobiles Internet mit UMTS & GPRS).

Please be aware that the information above concerns blauworld while there is also another prepaid SIM from the same company called just blau which is more expensive for calls to Hong Kong.

http://www.prepaid-wiki.de/images/Blauworld_logo.jpghttp://www.prepaid-wiki.de/images/Blau.jpg

Yes, it is.

Usually it's not a problem. You just need to walk straight through to the checkout counter and ask the cashier for a Lidl SIM. However it happens that Lidl supermarkets run out of stock sometimes, so you might need to find the next one.

Thanks for your information.
Good news to me that my wife will get an calling card from her company and we dont need to worry about the Internation call to HK now.

I think we'd better go for a Lidl SIM.
Hope we can get the SIM in supermarket that time. :p

Hi,

Just found this forum, I also come from Hong Kong and will have trip to Germany shortly for 18 days. After browsing the info about LIDL mobile infomation in this forum, I found the 30 days unlimited data plan is good for me. In addition, It's great to know that voip can be used in LIDLnetwork as I have voip account to make calls back to Hong Kong free of charge.

Just want to clarify the steps to go
- buy a SIM card at 9.95 Euro
- buy a 15 Euro top up voucher
- activate the SIM card either via on-line or SMS
- submit the top up code
- book the 30 days unlimited plan (14.99 Euro) by on-line page. or I can make it by SMS or other ways?

One other thing, can I use the remaining money (10 + 15 - 14.99) for local call?

Best regards

You can't activate the SIM by SMS as it won't register on the network before it has been activated. You can only activate the SIM online or through the printed form which you would need to submit by snail mail or fax and would take at least 24h to be processed

As described in detail here you can also subscribe to the monthly data flat by sending a text with "START MONATSFLAT" to 54356 (L-I-D-L-M). Shortly after that you should receive a text asking for confirmation which you need to answer by sending just "JA". Before starting to browse the internet make sure you've received the final confirmation from Lidl saying that your "Monatsflatrate" has been successfully activated.

Sure. you can call all German networks (no matter if landlines or mobiles) at € 0.09/min. Calls to the US, Canada and European landlines are charged at the same price while calls to European mobiles cost € 0.29/min.
You should know that as mentioned here under "activation", step 7 you can get a bonus credit of € 5 if you provide some other Lidl customer's phone number as referer during activation. The instructions contain such number (actually mine ;-)) and the refering customer does also receive a bonus of € 5. The problem is just that it may take up to 3 weeks until this bonus from the referral program has been accredited so you would need to make sure your SIM is being activated 3 weeks before arrival so you would have a total credit of € 15 which would suffice for the monthly data flatrate.

Dear inquisitor,
You're so wonderful and always be informative! Thanks.
I will ask my friend in Germany to help me to purchase and activate the sim card before my landing and then pass to me as we will meet the next day.

I would like to have your LIDL number for letting both of us to have the bonous. And then I will ask my firend to activate the sim card with your number as referral.

Cheers

One more question,

We will have a day trip to Salzburg (Austra), how about the data roaming charge?

Thanks

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.

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.:p

Cheers
Have a nice weekend

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.

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

Yes, calls work just fine.

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.

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).

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

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...?

I'm not aware of any new law. The obligation to register customers' identity has been in force for years. Either the regulatory authority has ordered Fonic to somehow verify the correctness of registration details by sending out this letter since the former registration process has been found being insufficient or Fonic indeed try to ban shorttime visitors (who usually lack a proper address in Germany) from becoming customers. Operators usually pay license fees for their billing and CRM systems based on the number of customers, so a visitor using his SIM only once for a week or two may become unprofitable if they need to pay license fees for months or years.

But this would hold for pretty much all operators in Germany, don't you think?

That's also quite interesting, as Germany is the only country I know of in Europe, where operators give you unlimited account validity! (Suggesting that they don't mind inactive customers). It all seems rather contradicting...

Indeed. However few have such lax registration procedures like Fonic. Some operators require an ID upon purchase (e.g. T-Mobile, Vodafone) while others perform some form of verification by selling their SIM cards only online and so customers are forced to provide credit card or bank account information besides a valid address in order to get their SIM cards.

Yes, but they all reserve the right to cancel the underlying contract at some point and e.g. T-Mobile and Vodafone have been doing so. One of my Vodafone Callya SIMs was recently disabled after three months of inactivity. However they immediately reactivated it upon my request.
I guess it's a question of operators' license agreements/costs and of the ratio of unused SIM cards. At some point they will all start acting if necessary. In any case I'm a bit surprised by Fonic taking such measures since their tariffs are pretty good so I expect them to have a rather high ARPU for a prepaid provider.

Just got to Hungary last night. Tried to SMS, same problem. "Check operator services." Tried multiple providers, still same error. Any other ideas?

As you're apparently using a Nokia phone (at least the Google results for "Service com. editor" suggest this) please go to Message | Options | Message Settings | Sending Profiles - select the first item among the Sending Profiles and edit the Message centre number to match the following: +491760000443
For "Messages sent as" choose "Text" and save this.

Now retry sending a message and also try sending a text to you own Lidl number to rule out an inter-network problem. If it still fails you should perhaps try sending a text from another phone to rule out that there's a problem with your phone.

Also it would be good to know if you can receive SMS from other people.

Yes, it is a Nokia phone.

I found a similar menu option, that the number you provided was already entered correctly.

As I said, I receive all SMS messages sent to me, even when I have been outside of Germany. It is only sending SMS messages that is the problem.

I attempted to send an SMS to my own Lidl number and got the same "Check operator services" error.

I also tried removing my SIM card and powering off the phone. Doesn't help.

I deleted all the messages in my sent folder. Doesn't help.

The phone is model # 1661-2.

Also, just to clarify, the phone worked fine in Germany. I sent SMS no problem. The problem only came when I left the country, and I have lots of credit.

I fear there is an issue on the network, namely in Fonic's HLR or so. I've just sent you a private message containing a message in German to be forwarded to Fonic's customer care. I hope they'll be able to solve the issue.

Dear Inquisitor,
Just want to let you know I've activated the sim card here in Hong Kong via the service portal and add your mobile number in the friend referral section. Thanks for your very detailed steps for activation process.

Now I have 10 Euro in my account (I've checked in the portal) and I will wait for early June to subscribe the unlimted monthly data plan for Euro 15 as I expect I can get the 5 Euro bonous then. After my arrival in Frankfurt, I can use the data immediately.

I've also got the topup voucher (I will use it for voice calls) with the cashcode in 15 euro, can I also top up my account in the portal by using this cashcode? Or I have to use the mobile phone to top up when I am in Germany by using the access code *103*(cashcode)# ?

Cheers

Thank you for refering to my number during activation!

Those € 5 should have been accredited before June so you'll end up with a total balance of € 15 which would allow you to activate the 5GB monthly flatrate before arrival.

Top up codes can be redeemed only through your mobile by USSD (*103*cashcode#). But since your Lidl SIM should roam on Hong Kong networks you could actually enter the code already now. Submitting USSD commands does not involve any costs, even from abroad. Btw you can also check your current balance by submitting *101#.