22 October. Had to get a local prepaid SIM card while in Venice. All the research suggested TIM, the Telecom Italia mobile carrier. But the letting agent’s Andrea suggested we look at Vodafone as he said they had the better coverage. So next day I went to the Vodafone store next to the Rialto vaporetto stop but when I got there the agent said their provisioning system was down so I couldn’t buy a card. Just as well as he said the only prepaid SIM cards they sell was a 35 Euro pack. Knowing that Vodafone has a 10 Euro pack didn’t help as he said that his store only sold the 35 Euro pack. This is clearly a profiteering strategy as I suspect 95% plus of their prepaid customers are tourists who are in Venice for a few days. I don’t need a mobile for a month, just the few days. Anyway, he suggested I go to the other side of the Rialto bridge and check out what the TIM store has in PAYG SIMs.
So I did and ended up with a couple of TIM micro SIMs for 13 Euro each. The pack was the TIM CARD INTERNATIONAL LIMITED which has a great package of 60 minutes of calls to Italian numbers, 100 local SMS and Unlimited Data at 250 MB per week. After you consume the free stuff there’s 5 Euros of credit included. Not sure if this shop was making a super profit on these because it’s hard to find the street price for this pack. Anyway, 13 Euros was a lot better than the Vodafone offer.