Cheapest rates in germany for...

[Evan]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Their only innovative features beyond the versatile recharge options are the free call diversions to landlines in the following countries:France, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithunia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands.

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Also they give bonus minutes for incoming calls when call diversions are set (so-called "Teleprofit").

What's the catch with that? I mean do they really offer free call diversions to landlines of 27 EU countries and free and cash-back call diversions to German landlines? Again, what's the catch?

Originally Posted by inquisitor

@Evan
This article from teltarif.de mentions minutel being "quasi-prepaid". That means the tariff is based on a postpaid billing-platform, which may not run always in realtime resulting in the theoretical possibility of generating a negative balance. That's probably why minutel's terms and conditions contain the right to check customers' creditworthiness with Schufa (a German credit investigation company). So I doubt non-residents without Schufa-record can order minutel.

Yes I noticed that the day before yesterday on the article of teltarif.de and I sent an e-mail to the author to confirm if this is a "quasi-prepaid" plan before I post more details here. Unfortunately, I haven't received any reply from him yet.

If it is indeed a "quasi-prepaid" plan (as opposed to a "real prepaid" plan), then is of no use for non-residents but also for residents of Germany (personally I'm hesitant to subscribe to a "quasi-prepaid" plan).

However, I highly doubt that Minutel's plan is "quasi-prepaid". It looks more like a "real prepaid" plan and there are strong indications for that, like:

1. The same author wrote another article on teltarif.de about the differences between prepaid and quasi-prepaid plans and how to recognize which is which. Based on that article, Minutel has all the characteristics of a "real prepaid" plan and almost none of the characteristics of a "quasi-prepaid" plan.

For example, they don't require a German bank account to purchase their starter pack, their starter pack comes with small amount of credit, you can top up your credit with a voucher/code purchased with numerous ways, and it is possible to check your credit balance via the *101# USSD code. To my knowledge, none of the above characteristics are available on "quasi-prepaid" plans.

2. According to their site info section, they are a daughter company of Callax and according to their ToS they are a MVNO of the ring Mobilfunk which is a MVNE of E-Plus. So far, "ring Mobilfunk" operated the MVNO "Ring" that has the same ToS like Minutel and also has only "real prepaid" plans.

3. Also according to another source, the German prepaid wiki, Minutel offers "real prepaid" plans.

4. Regarding the Schufa clause, I read that it cannot be used as an indication of which prepaid plan is applied. There are some "real prepaid" plans that has a Schufa clause on their ToS. For example, Fonic has a Schufa clause but actually it was never used so far. Same goes with Solomo, when someone wants to pay by direct debit. In the case of Minutel, and since they use the same ToS as Ring, I assume that the will use Schufa only for identity confirmation and not for a credit data query, just like Ring.

Nevertheless, the only way to know for sure is to contact Minutel and/or purchase a card for testing. I plan to do that soon.

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by Evan

What's the catch with that? I mean do they really offer free call diversions to landlines of 27 EU countries and free and cash-back call diversions to German landlines? Again, what's the catch?

There's no catch. E-Plus receives € 0.0714/min in termination fee for incoming calls from other networks. Passing a call to a fixed network in one of those 27 countries costs them ~ € 0.01-0.02/min and so they earn more than € 0.05/min without wasting any of the rare capacity on their radio network.

[Evan]

Thank you for the explanation. I hope that they won't change the terms of that offer like their "sister" company, Ring, did recently. They've announced a cap of 900 bonus points per call and no bonus points for incoming calls from abroad or within the Ring network.

ring - Prepaid telefonieren, einfach und unbeschwert.