Recharge cards
 

At a Eurospar supermarket, they have recharge cards for all carriers in different amounts.

The signs say they carry no value until a cashier scans and puts value into them.

I looked at the back of one and it was mostly small print with a barcode.

How would one use the barcode to recharge? Do the carriers sites support using these? Someone said the scratch cards are being phased out.

Anyone try getting one of these cards and using from outside of Italy?

I'm not sure how they do it in Italy, but in German supermarkets you would take those cards from the shelf to the cashier who scans the barcode, keeps that card thereafter and instead gives you a receipt coming out of the slip printer which contains the topup code. Those cards on the shelf are just there to help customers identify the required brand and amount of available topups and to avoid misunderstandings.

So it would be the same number format as the scratch off cards then?

OK, because in the US, the stores sell gift cards and prepaid credit cards the same way. They have displays with dozens of them and you take the ones you want to the cashier and pay them. I never bought one of these but that makes sense, that they'd have to give you some code, unless they're able to program the barcodes.

Probabaly yes.

That's how it worked in Germany until a couple of years ago, too. But nowadays that cash points are all IP-connected it's probably cheaper to print out recharge codes at the register instead of producing and handling those scratch cards, which notably can be stolen.

Actually we still have such over here, e.g. for amazon or iTunes but no recharge vouchers for cell providers in that form anymore.

The problem with barcodes is that European EAN-13 codes have only 13 digits, of which about half are reserved for country and manufacturer identification which leaves only 2-6 digits for the actual item code, which is too short to contain recharge codes. Of course they could introduce a new separate barcode for this purpose but that would actually complicate things.

the barcode only holds the info which product you purchase. On the cashier they have a terminal that is generating the scratch-card code and print it directly on your receipt. These barcode cards are then re-attached on the display for the next customers to carry to the cashier...

Ok I tried sending a text thru the web interface of my Mifi.

I pretended 1 for the US country code. My phone, which is roaming, never got the text. But TIM deducted 12 cents from the account.

So concerned if I have to try to send a text to recharge when the SIM will be roaming on a US network.

Did you use the correct international prefix? If your US number was 212 1234567 you would need to send the text to +12121234567 or 0012121234567.

In any case the fact that texts from TIM subscribers potentially are not being delivered to your US provider does not necessarily mean that you can't send a text from your TIM SIM back to its home network while roaming.

Anyway, topup codes are usually submitted by USSD (those codes with * and # at the beginning and end), which by the way I suspect your Mifi doesn't support.

I just put in 1, not +1 or 001.

Guess I'll try again.

Mifi is using web browser so I can input * and # but not sure they will be interpreted the same.

Well, then you have just omitted the international call prefix, which differs throughout the world. It's the safest way to always save all numbers starting with +<country code> in your phone as this will lead to the + being automatically replaced by the international call prefix valid for the country you are staying at.

I never knew they actually differ arround the world :)

I do like the Finnish approach!