Hi,

I've been using my prepaid wind sim with the mega no limit option activated from 14/1/06. It automatically renewed yesterday which I find surprising as my account only had EUR 4.80 credit - nowhere near enough to cover the EUR 20 monthly fee! I've checked just now on the 155.it website and in the available credit section it says my balance is EUR 0.00 but the Mega no limit credit is EUR 3000. I'd assumed the mega no limit wouldn't renew unless I had enough credit but it seems I was wrong.

I've now noticed that it's impossible to use the net from the phone. Have they put a block on the line or something? Will simply topping up by enough to cover the "debt" re-enable it?

I'd really appreciate any tips. :wacko:

Thanks in advance.

Greetings,
Michael :bye2:

Yes, when you are at ? 0 credit you can do nothing. Of course they are not so kind to let you use the MegaNoLimit paying just 4.80 euros, you need to top-up and after that they will take you the ? 15.20 needed for the MNL fee and since your credit will be positive, you'll be able to use all the features again.

how very nice of them :whistle:

Thanks for the info...I suspected it would be something like that!

Now the new problem...the online topup at mondowind worked fine last month with my AMEX card but now everytime I try and do a topup I get an email saying:

Gentile Michael,

durante la transazione per il pagamento del tuo ordine non h stata rilasciata l autorizzazione all addebito sulla tua carta di credito. Per questo motivo, l ordine che hai effettuato h stato annullato.

I've tried several times and it's always the same :( . I know it's not a problem with the amex card so I guess wind may have made their system more secure or something. I'll go try a visa card now - a bit of a pain as it takes wind hours before they come back saying the transaction was turned down.

Are there any other topup possibilities?

Thanks!
Michael

I'm not sure if is already working, but into the starmap alliance there is/will be the possibility to recharge a prepaid sim with the top up of another member of the same alliance. So theorically you can recharge the wind sim with o2 top-up, but it's better if you can check this on o2 web site.

Thanks for the tip about o2 - however, I don't think this is operational yet as there is absolutely no mention of it on their website.

I'll go and try the amex card again on mondowind one last time. I'll know in a few hours whether it gets turned down again or not.

I think it's Mondowind which has problems, it's not a very reliable service, but that's the only one... :(
The recharge with O2 should be operational in this period, but I don't know anything more...

If not on the O2 website, can an O2 code voucher be used?

Well, I've just received another email from "mondowind" to say the transaction was declined. I've tried my amex card twice and also a visa card and every time it's the same result - +/- 2 hours later I get an email saying it was declined. As far as I can see it's either the fact mondowind have tightened up their authorisation checks and now their system turns down foreign cards or a temporary glitch. Has anybody else topped up today on mondowind?

I do hope an o2 voucher will work as otherwise there's no way to topup the wind card outside Italy :sad:. I just wish I'd topped up by more last month when it went through! Maybe no more mega-no-limit for me until my next trip to Italy in a couple of months :(

The only thing I can find about the o2 / wind alliance is this webpage which has no mention of foreign topup vouchers: Link to o2

sorry to be dumb but cant you get andrea or effendi to buy you a scratch card and enter that from the UK ? you could pay them by paypal

I hadn't actually thought to ask that but as Andrea was already kind enough to get me the wind sim card I think it might be a bit much to start asking for scratch cards as well. This is an ongoing issue and I think it would be rather unfair to expect people to go to such trouble.

Anyway, thanks to me using gmail and it having the conveniently placed adverts relevant to the viewed email I found this link:

Starmap PDF

So, it seems beppe was correct before...and rather quick seeing as this was only announced yesterday! From my simple understanding of this it means I can just buy an o2 topup here in the UK. However, I wonder how much the "handling charge" will be when converting it from GBP to Euro? I know Vodafone give a rather poor rate. Also, how do I add the credit?

I just realised another option which would avoid losing out on the euro/pound exchange rate. I could just buy an online code topup from verivox for o2 Germany. Now I wonder how much would be left from a 20 euro topup?

Still...before I go and buy a topup I'd really like to know it's 100% possible to at least call the wind topup line. What's the number for this when roaming?

I think the service is not active yet, anyway, you have to recharge in the same country where you buy the top-up, so buying it in Germany you have to go to Germany in order to top-up... quite stupid, but so it works.

So, you should buy an O2 UK top-up card, since you live there. There is a recharge fee, of course, as follows:
- 1? for refills up to 4?
- 2? for refills up to 10?
- 5? for refills up to 59.99?
- free for refills of 60? and more

The exchange rate to ? should be published on http://estero.wind.it but of course there's nothing by now. Surely it won't be too good.

To refill you have to dial the short number 4242. The USSD code is: *124*4242#. With O2 you don't need USSD codes, since it has direct roaming (CAMEL) but I fear you could pay 1?/min with that, while with USSD it's surely free of charge (I should investigate).

Anyway, if you need an Italian top-up don't worry to ask me or Andrea, we surely can help you. Unfortunately Andrea has some problems with his ADSL in these days and that's why you cannot see him here on the forum, and I fear he cannot read e-mails as well (there's some weird problem, he cannot surf non .it sites). Feel free to write us in private (I read the same e-mail) if you need help. I'm sorry because Andrea could surely be more helpful since he's an expert about credit cards and Wind website, while I refill directly with my landline postpaid account and I never used it.

Thanks very much Effendi - really a great help.

I've tried to call the topup line with direct dial on o2 and with the callback method but as I've now got 0 euro on my account the call doesn't go through :wacko:

I'd guess this means even if I had a topup card number there wouldn't be a way for me to add it into my account. That is unless there is a way to do it via some message type code thing. Anyway, I'll try the mondowind again just now with a Mastercard just in case it makes a difference but it's not looking so hopeful.

ticex can you send me by private mail the details of your registration @ mondowind.it?

I think that we have a problem with "codice fiscale"... better, mondowind has troubles with foreigner "cod fiscale" :(

oh well... another person wrote me about the same problem :(

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (email)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Andrea

Thanks so much for helping with my WIND sim. I have used it for the last few weeks and it's been great. Now I am about to go to Europe again and I need to recharge ............... guess what? Mondowind won't take my credit card again! This is the message that I get back:

Gentile XXX XXXX,

per mondowind on line h molto importante garantire la sicurezza degli acquisti dei suoi Clienti e per questo motivo eseguiamo con attenzione alcune operazioni preliminari di verifica.

Dal momento che per l ordine in oggetto tale verifica non h risultata completamente soddisfacente, per motivi di sicurezza l ordine che hai effettuato h stato annullato.



Cordiali saluti,

Servizio Clienti mondowind on line



So it seems to me that there is now a conflict between the registered address (yours) and the credit card?s billing address (XXXXX) that the security checks are throwing up.



I have sent an email to Wind but as I only have a few days before I leave and only a few until my month expires, I thought the easiest solution this time might be to send you some euro (plus a donation!) via paypal and get you to top up my account for me. Would that be possible? Then we can try to resolve the longer term issue with wind.

[/quote:53f8b9e181]

so ticex I think that i can't help you by email :(

I can recharge for you but pay attention that PayPal has a extra-fee surchage

Yes that's my message!! I was so pleased when Andrea managed to get things set up so that mondowind accepted my AMEX last month - the mega no limit is a great solution to GPRS charges anywhere in the world!

But now I have the same problem when I try to recharge. I think it's because there is a conflict between my mondowind address and my credit card address or else a problem with the code fiscale that we had to use to get the registration to go through in the first place. There must have been some tightening up of security features.

It's very generous of Andrea to offer to help out here. That's a good short term solution but not fair on Andrea if we all have to do it all the time!!

What's the underlying issue here? Is Wind trying to stop foreigners using their network? Or is it just the system not recognising the possibility? If its the latter then we should be able to get them to sort it out for us - but my Italian fails me! (Like none!)

Andrea and all - thanks for the great help that prepaidgsm.net gives us!

It's interesting to hear I'm not alone in this problem! As far as I can see it we either have a temporary problem that everybody is having with Mondowind (maybe even people in Italy too), it was only possible to buy once with a foreign card or they've tightened the security and blocked foreigners topping up.

Just in case it's some specific thing with non euro currency cards I've tried again just now with my Belgian Visa card. I'll give it the usual 2-3 hours and let you know if it goes through...I don't have much hope though! I did it a few minutes ago and it just changed to "Ordine in fase di evasione" in the tracking section...maybe a good sign?!

Otherwise - I really do appreciate the offer Andrea and it would really be great if you could do a topup for me. What I'd propose is to do a one-off topup that would cover a few months of mega-no-limit as I think it's really to much to ask every month or so for you to get a topup! Anyway, thanks so much - really so helpful!

:clap:

I think simply that Mondowind has a crappy control system and they never thought to have customers from abroad (this is really dumb, we have millions of italian living overseas!)... also I wrote them, I hope that they can understand the problem and resolve it soon

Incredible!!! Good news - IT WORKED!! :thumbup:

The status just changed to "Consegnato al Cliente" and I just logged into 155.it and the credit is on my account plus also showing when I do *123# on the handset. I also note the huge difference in speed compared to my AMEX - it took hours to go through whereas this just took a matter of minutes. WIND are now 45 euro richer.

Just so everyone else knows this was with a VISA credit card.

On a side note...the original reason for this topup was because the mega-no-limit renewed when I only had 4.84 euro credit. I was expecting the new credit to drop by the difference but it's just sitting at 40 euro (the exact amount I just added) and the mega no limit credit has updated immediately I did the 1st use a few seconds ago.

Questo il credito disponibile sulla tua linea prepagata Wind: 40,00 Euro
Opzione Mega No Limit: il tuo credito residuo disponibile ?: 2.999,09 Euro

Now, it could be I've scored a cheap mega-no-limit but I think it's more sensible to think they will take the extra shortly....I'll let you all know just in case it's a nice money saver B)

I hope that this was thanks to my email that i wrote yesterday too :P

Anyway... Mondowind sometimes took hours to go with VISA or MC too... it's a really strange website, dont' worry :D

Andrea, well, it wouldn't be surprising if it was because of your email. Afterall it was with reference to people trying to pay them money - something most companies are usually quite interested in sorting out!

You never know...maybe after your email they completely streamlined their whole system and now it's operating at hyper efficiency :meh:

Anyway, thanks again Andrea...it's nice to have the no limit web in my pocket again!

Just a quick update....as I expected the credit has now dropped by the extra 16 euro to cover the missing mega no limit payment from the other day.

Anyway, I suspect if such an obvious loophole existed the "prepaid pioneer" would have found it already :P

I got the following response to lmy email to mondowind explainng the problem

Can't complain about that for service! Except that by the time I got the response AndreA had already fixed my problem! Thanks all. :clap:

Do we think that means that Wind is now routinely set up to accept overseas credit cards for recharges even with different addresses? Has anyone else done this successfully after Andrea's intervention?

Marc

I've previously registered @ mondowind.it and tried to recharge today. After entering the credit card information, it is asking me for my birth/residence information. I can't seem to put in a non-Italian birth country, "EE" brings up various cities in San Marino, and it keeps rejecting with

Help !

You have to enter the italian adress there for which your code fiscale was created.
you can generate a code fiscale on a website of the italian gouvernment http://www.comuni.it/servizi/codfisc/

You have to use exactly the data that is generated for you on this website.

Chris

AndreA sent me the Wind registration form used to create my service, and I have the address and codice fiscale filled out properly. The problem is that it's asking the "birth" information which does NOT give me an option to put it anywhere else other than Italian provinces and cities.

Help !

Is there a provence called "Estero"? :)

Thankyou thankyou thankyou. "ES" did the trick !

Now let's hope they wouldn't reject my Canadian Mastercard

Edit: After about 10-15 minutes, 155.it shows the credit and my on-line MasterCard statement show charge authorization. Also got this followup e-mail
Yippe !!

I haven't been able to recharge my Wind SIM with mondowind so I went looking for another online top-up provider. I found Ricaricati.com. It is a bit cumbersome for non-italian speakers but for those who recharge on a frequent basis it may be a better deal as they offer a 15% bonus (as long as you pay a EUR15 activation fee).

The site is ricaricati.com. If you decide to try them up my referal code is 6MCFR.

vs

I discovered that Wind have again extended the life of the offer - it can now be applied for until 31 December, and usable until 31 January

Unfortunately that's not sure! In some parts of their internet sites they extended it, on some other pages not... On the main page they wrote both the new and old expiration date! :blink:
I really hope they are going to extend it, but by now nothing is sure...