Just for the records, calls to other Aldi subscribers cost just € 0.03/min even from EU/EEA member states and Switzerland. So Aldi is also very interesting for people who travel in Europe and look for a cheap way to call each other.

This is indeed very interesting. Its funny how one of the main roaming requirements of almost all tourists is just to call other members of their family who might well be in the same shopping mall! (or in my case... usually in the same shop!) I know of some people who use 2-way radio for this... though I do say it is a sorry sight ever so much more embarrasing than a discreet phone... "Hank...where have you wandered off to again?... can you come down to the lingerie section and give tell me which of these you prefer..."

For a travelling family, buying a pair (or more) of these SIMs is really interesting. I actually do not even know of any cheaper alternative in the EU, or even any other product that comes close.

What Happens When You Exhaust Your Roaming Data Quota?
 

If one purchases the 120 MB/7 day data package, what is the charge for extra MB? Is it possible to buy a second package within the 7 day period?

Exceeding data volume is billed with € 0.23/MB and yes, you can immediately buy another package once you have consumed those 120MB, even if that is before the 7-day period has ended. Unfortunately you cannot order a second package before the first one has expired so there is no way to seamlessly use the next package without being billed a few kilobytes separately.

Is it possible in Germany to activate call forwarding to another tel.number? while simcard is in roaming i can confirm this is not possible

No, unfortunately no forwardings except for such to your mailbox are supported, no matter if you are roaming or not. Actually very few German prepaid providers allow forwardings and even those who support such often limit forwardings to the own mobile network.

Hi, Everyone! The EU Internet-Packet 150 brochure says 150MB/7d "im EU-Ausland". Does that mean that I can connect to the Internet while travelling in all European countries excluded Germany?? If so, do I need to buy an additional packet for Germany? Thx.

- Yes

- Yes

Recharging Aldi
 

Aldi talk is a great option when travelling throughout the eu. However, it is still a problem for a non-German to buy credit outside Germany. While, the Prelado site allows purchases using PayPal, you are restricted to an "unknown" time interval between subsequent purchases. Are there alternative 3rd party recharge sites that allow purchase of eplus (Aldi Talk) vouchers with either a non-German credit card or PayPal?

in case you are still searching - you can purchase credit for nearly all german cards here: http://www.guthaben.de/
using credit card or paypal (transaction fee 99ct).
unfortunately the page is in german only

Can you please tell me dg7feq:

What is the advantage of using guthaben.de ???
They charge well hidden "transaction fees" of around 5%.

There is http://www.prelado.de. With them the recharge is absolutely without additional fees, at least for the providers i know of. They use the same payment systems and their website can be switched entirely to English?

So why do you recommend guthaben.de? To place an ad? There a dozens of top-up agencies doing it for a surcharge? So compared to prelado, what's the reason to choose guthaben.de?

i only used guthaben.de website so far, the other one (prelado) is even blocked on our company network, dont know why. If they are also good then its nice that you refer to it here.
Thanks for sharing.

I used ladeshop.de to top up my Alditak using a credit card few times when no Aldi shop was close or being out of Germany. Much faster (the amount is credited almost instantly) than a bank transfer which takes days. No additional fees were charged. Don't know whether foreign cards are admitted though.

That didn't work out? Shame :(

Australia is a totally different market with much less competition than Germany sees. So you can't compare that, especially as in Germany AldiTalk is a service provided directly by an subsidirary of the underlying MNO (fomerly eplus, now Telefonica O2) which legally is also the contracting party. Aldi simply has licensed its brand to eplus and sells SIM cards for them. If you expand the legal notes in the footer of AldiTalk's website you will see the following clause stating that the contracting party is eplus:
So you can assume that their tariffs are sustainable.

One problem with prelado.de, though, is that they only accept bank cards issued in Germany. Since this in an international forum, prelado.de is not an option.

Thanks for telling us. I was not aware of that.
This may then be true to other 3rd-party top-up sites like guthaben.de or ladeshop.de too and makes topping up German SIM cards by credit card much harder.

I believe you, because the geo-restriction of credit cards is used in the UK too. It's almost impossible to top up with non-UK issued cards.

But I don't believe you too: prelado.de accepts PayPal too. With special payment systems like PayPal I never had any geo-restriction on any site which accepts PayPal. I don't even think a geo-restriction is possible with PayPal. How should the merchant know, to which source your PayPal account is linked?
So I still think you can use any PayPal account to load German SIM cards on prelado.de.

Is anybody (from outside of Germany) here who has other experiences?

UPDATE: The following has been confirmed by prelado.de

I send them a query by mail. Here is their reply:
Leider können wir aktuell aus Sicherheitsgründen nur Kreditkarten deutscher Banken für das Aufladen des Guthabens akzeptieren. PayPal konnte bisher auch von ausländische Kunden erfolgreich genutzt werden.

Translation: Unfortunately, we can only accept credit cards of German banks for top-ups right now for security reasons. PayPal can be used sucessfully by foreign customers for topping up.

So summing up: German SIM cards are still hard to reload by non-German credit cards. Only Ortel and Lebara offer this option on their website (but may restrict some cards too). 3rd-party reload sites like prelado.de only accept German credit cards.

But there is a loophole: If you want to keep a German SIM card alive and are not in the country (where you can buy vouchers), use PayPal e.g. on www.prelado.de without surcharge. Only for transactions of NON-€ currencies PayPal charges high conversion fees.

It doesn't work with paypal either, when paypal is based on a non-German bank card. I have tried several times. The underlying card has to be German for Prelado to accept the payment.

you need to have positive balance on your paypal account, then it will also work,

Chris

Yes maybe so, but then the whole point with paypal would be lost.

No. wrong :chair: Users are looking for a way to maintain a German SIM card. To keep it alive without being in the country, you need to do some activity from time to time, at least once or twice a year. Cards of some German providers, you need to top up too.

German SIM cards don't last forever not using them. Some users don't want to buy a new card all the time when coming to Germany. It's inconvenient and extra cost and time to do it.

So, how can you top up a German SIM card (without a German payment system)?
- > You can buy vouchers in Germany before and redeem them from abroad, but this is quite uncomfortable and need some action in advance.
- > You can go to Lebara or Ortel mobile. The only providers to be topped up online by credit card. But some (non-German) cards may not work as well.

After all, if you consider the PayPal method (via prelado.de) so "pointless", what is your solution: How do you top up a German SIM card from abroad. It's easy to say "nah, what's the point" without showing a better way. :o

If there was a bwetter way, I think soneone would have posted it, by now.

Sorry for the bad spelling. I was in a hurry.

Further to my original post, in October 2014, I was able to use paypal, associated with a Canadian Visa card, to make a 15 euro recharge via prelado. However, I had to wait approximately 1 week before I could make a 2nd recharge with paypal.

You don't need to buy a complicated german card.

Simply use three. You will get 13 GB around the world with a simple prepaidplan

http://www.three.co.uk/support/roaming/germany

You can topup here and you are good to go

https://www.recharge.com/en/united-kingdom/three-top-up

German prepaid dataplans are for the bin

What an advice for the bin from you:

no 4G/LTE: generally no 4G/LTE international roaming on Three UK SIM cards. This means a very limited coverage as 3G is not built up outside towns and cities in Germany. Here 3G coverage is only at around 60%, while 4G is at around 90% of population (not area) - And 3G means of course much slower speeds compared to 4G/LTE.
no hotspot data: no tethering allowed on UK Three PAYG SIM card. They sniff and kill tethering (mobile hotspot) connections through Deep Package Inspection
hard to top-up: no chance to top-up an Three UK SIM card without a UK registered credit card or you face high surcharges by some agencies. Recharge.com that you have linked charges around 10% fee for top-ups.

Why do you keep on suggesting these things?
-> without mentioning the strings attached?
When I consume a package of up to 12 GB what you have suggested, users need to have 4G/LTE available nowadays at least most of the time.
3G can still be sufficient for texting and messaging. But for these tasks, not 12 GB, rather 12 MB are needed.

I agree that UK SIM cards (not only Three) can be a good option for roaming in Germany.
Their big advantage is their easy activation which is very tricky in Germany right now through this online video chat.
I've checked all major UK providers, but they only offer a better rate on large packs (> 5GB) compared with usual German prepaid plans.
Three is the least appealing choice with the absence of 4G/LTE roaming and the top-up fees of the agencies.

All major UK operators (other than Three) offer 4G networks in Germany under "roam like at home" rules without surcharges at domestic UK prices:
EE on Telekom LTE and O2.DE LTE networks, but throttled - all credit cards accepted
Vodafone UK on Vodafone DE LTE network, unthrottled - all credit cards accepted
O2 UK and even giffgaff at least on O2 DE LTE network - giffgaff also accepts foreign credit cards

Wolfbin, I had owned a Vodaphone UK sim card for years until my nephew lost the sim card. I have never known Vodaphone to accept foreign credit cards. When did this happen? I use a three sim card now.

Vodafone allows direct topup on the prepaid plans by using a UK issued card only. But they also allow paypal! And they do not check the card there

I was able to top-up most UK providers with a German credit or debit card. I'm not sure whether it worked directly with Vodafone UK, but the PayPal bypass surely works.

EE works with out-of UK credit cards as well as giffgaff. O2 UK only worked with one of mine (N26) which is distributed (but not released) in the UK too. The tricky thing with Three is that they want to check addresses. Even if you use Kwikpay and PayPal set up to the same fake UK address (who cares there is no registration), it was declined.

Generally, the situation is going to improve within the EU. From the end of 2018 all merchants are not allowed to discriminate where the payment source is coming from. This means when they accept MasterCard or Visa, they need to accept all MasterCards or Visas at least issued in any EU country. You can see the first signs happening: on the TIM Italia top-up website there is a tiny boy to check, when you are now allowed to pay with a foreign credit card.

What the UK is concerned, we don't know if these regulations will take effect there as they are bound to leave the EU in 2019 one way or the other. And continental providers still sometimes need a reminder of the rules....To cut a long story short: There is hope, that this restrictive policy is coming to an end - but we'll have to see if this going to be really true for everybody.

I have topped up a Vodafone UK SIM about three weeks ago using a German VISA on https://topup.vodafone.co.uk/topup/ There was no problem.

Please note that the EU regulation 2018/302 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-cont...8R0302&from=EN) which enters into force in December this year, dictates non-discrimination of different means of payment. So all credit cards issued in the EU will have to be treated in the same way and cannot be rejected.

The same EU regulation also prohibits any geo blocking of online pages which are used for administration of a service or purchase and payment except for copyright protected works. Anybody within the EU will have to be able to buy a topup with the same conditions. Also the online stores like AppStore and PlayStore wil have to offer all the apps except those for access to copyright protected works to everybody within the EU.

So many operators are already preparing now and start accepting all EU credit cards and are removing geo blocking. As always, there will certainly be some which will not comply with the regulation. And if Brexit happens in March, the things might change for the UK.

But with Three I can use up to 12 GB in 70 Countrys.

And I can call for only 3 penny per Minute.