Talk:Peru/@comment-32853647-20180815135622

I was in Peru again recently and had problems (again) with Movistar. For my SIM card I couldn't buy the 2GB internet package even though I had enough funds on the card. I tried several times using the *515# menu and it said that everything was OK and that I would get a confirmation SMS. But the SMS never came and the saldo function confirmed that nothing was bought (and that I had enough money to buy it).

After two hours I managed to buy it in the "Mi Movistar" mobile app (which is itself a big problem since you can only download it from the Google Play store if you have a Movistar branded phone). I managed to install the APK file on my international Samsung phone. The app is pretty bad and buggy (if you resume it after some time it will ask for your mobile number but if you kill the app then start it then it suddenly remembers your phone number and login credentials again). I also tried "Mi Claro" which never worked properly, I could register my phone number and set a pin code but it would always time out when trying to login, even if I used it from a phone on 4G with Claro and while beeing in Peru. That app also can't be downloded without a Peruvian branded mobile phone. Bitel and Entel apps can be downloaded with any phone (but only Bitel can be used with an international credit card).

For my girlfiriends Movistar SIM card the problem was that it said that not enough funds were available even thogh I had charged them both with the same amount of money using recharge.com a week earlier and before choosing the 2GB package mobile data was disabled so nothing should have used money before that. But we didn't see the SMS that the funds were insufficient and after some light surfing almost all the money were gone the day after. So I had to charge all the money again to be able to buy the package. The only reason I bothered with Movistar instead of Bitel or Claro was that a lof of people have her (Movistar) phone number already.

Another bad thing is that prepaid Movistar SIM cards doesn't allow roaming but nothing indicating this is written on their web page (as far as I know). Only after showing my passport twice and waiting in two queues for a total of an hour and after two Movistar employees fiddled around in their computer system for five minutes were they able to tell me that it's impossible to enable roaming for prepaid SIM-cards. For Claro I think roaming is enabled by default on prepaid cards now but I didn't try it that recently. For Bitel you only need to have 5 soles in credit and then SMS the word ON to 155 to enable global roaming (or OFF to disable it). For Entel I don't really care but roaming is disabled by default and I think you have to buy a roaming package in their shop for it to be enabled.