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