TIM - Telecom Italia ripping people off with their Internet

I have been using the TIM Telecom Italia's Internet connections over HSDPA for almost a year now. Each month I go through the trouble of re-activating the system and it is to say the least a rip-off every single time.

As I am heavy Internet user I try to subscribe to the ALICE UNLIMITED. Well it is not really unlimited as it only allow you 400 hours of connectivity in a month. That amount normally covers me just barely. But that only IF the modem/network actually works properly full time during the month.

Today it was that day of the month again. Time to reload the Internet. As I dont trust the system I would never have it auto-activated on my Creditcard and thus have to go to the bancomat where I re-charge 50 Euro on to the Sim card or telephone number. I then get a SMS stating I have 50 Euro just loaded on the account. Ofcourse the Bancomat system don't allow me to reload the amount I want but rather have 4 fixed amounts.


With that I then try to activate the MAXXI ALICE UNLIMITED as per the instructions on internet. This entails sending a free! SMS. To make sure I don't consume all the credit I just put I check the availability of the promotion on internet with my Vodaphone connected mobile. And the www.tim.it webside proudly announce that I should subscribe to the MAXXI ALICE UNLIMITED as the most comprehensive subscription.


Unfortunately the system give me a not so positive answer to the effect that the particular offer is suspended? you can try to find that fact anywhere on the Website but it for sure is not suspended. It is just that they have figured out the way to rip people of. I have checked it month after month and even though I know how to activate that particular package it will only work every second or third activation while you have used another subscription in between ;-(


So with this denial SMS to activate the service the only option I have is to find another package. Then they have several options but it is only the 100 hour one that actually works any time of the day any time of the week. The others are only weekends and night time according to a schedule they do announce but in reality means all your normal phone credit is eaten up if by mistake someone forgot to only use it in the evening.

I then activate the 100 hour subscription which should cost 20 Euro and 5 euro for the first activation. Thus a maximum 25 Euro in any instance. That happened at 19:40



So a simple calculation would give me 50 - 20 = 30 Euro left or in worse case 50 - 25 Euro = 25 Euro left if for some reason the one day I was not subscribed warranted a new registration ;-(

Well obviously I dont know how to count as the credit left on the account is 1.81 Euro!!! I guess her smile below is saying. Thanks for letting us rip you off but atleast u got to see my thumbs up and smile.


If I try to press the link to Visualizza il dettaglio del traffico the only thing I can get is a blank screen or and error rapidly logging me out of the system.

To add insult to injury of course I also receive an SMS at 19:54 requesting me to refill the credit as obviously I will otherwise not be able to call or SMS anyone... I never use this Sim card for anything but the Internet.



Now the interesting thing is that this is a prepaid SIM card thus no billing or anything like that.
If I look on the billing there is no voice calls, no SMS's, no internet consumption and no miscellaneous charges of any sort. Just a blank page with 0 consumption. So where did 25 Euros disappear to????

Thus overall I have tried to activate 400 hours of Internet connectivity which should costs 40 Euro. Instead I am having to settle for 100 hours costing me 48,19 Euro's!!

Ofcourse there is no point in calling the Helpdesk as they dont speak anything but Italian. I have a collegue who speaks Italian and who tried to figure out how she could loose 50 Euro in one day even though she had only made 5 local telephone calls. She had no success in retrieving any money thus I do not expect any neither.

As you can see below All this happened in one our. Between 19:00 and 20:00 today. I guess they would say I did a whole lot of things that hour but in reality the only thing I was doing was trying to activate the Internet and check what is happening on the SMS log. As you can see the log shows first the received messages and the SMS's between the system and myself during that hour.

Inbox of SIM card

Outbox of Sim card.
As you can see all the SMS received and sent are all to 4916 which is a Free SMS number for the internet activation and credit checks. The recieved www.tim.it SMS;s are to warn me that someone tried to log in to the Account linked to the Sim card on the Tim server. That someone was me.

That was the first part of the ripoff?!