Turkey Report

DaveRo · 23-05-2011, 21:46

I just tried to buy a Turkcell prepaid card and register my phone today at a Turkcell shop. They copied my passport and entered the IMEI number into the computer.

All seemed to be going fine except that the SIM didn't work in the phone. This surprised the people in the shop. After much discussion and phoning their managers they declared that the phone was blocked and that it would start working after 2 days and then stop working after 10 days. This is contrary to what I expected which was that it would work immediately but stop working after 10 days unless it was registered: that was why I was registering it! I aborted the sale - a SIM that doesn't work, might work in a few days, but will then stop working after 10 days is not much use.

But I now don't know how the system is supposed to work. I'm in Turkey for 3 months. My experience suggests that you need to register your foreign phone just to use a prepaid SIM and that you can't use it for more than 10 days even if you do.

Can anybody shine any light on this?

	(#14)
DaveRo (Offline) Senior Member Prepaid Fan Posts: 153 Join Date: 07 Jul 2006 Country:	23-05-2011, 21:46 I just tried to buy a Turkcell prepaid card and register my phone today at a Turkcell shop. They copied my passport and entered the IMEI number into the computer. All seemed to be going fine except that the SIM didn't work in the phone. This surprised the people in the shop. After much discussion and phoning their managers they declared that the phone was blocked and that it would start working after 2 days and then stop working after 10 days. This is contrary to what I expected which was that it would work immediately but stop working after 10 days unless it was registered: that was why I was registering it! I aborted the sale - a SIM that doesn't work, might work in a few days, but will then stop working after 10 days is not much use. But I now don't know how the system is supposed to work. I'm in Turkey for 3 months. My experience suggests that you need to register your foreign phone just to use a prepaid SIM and that you can't use it for more than 10 days even if you do. Can anybody shine any light on this?