René Seindal

I’m preparing the last leg of my circumnavigation of Sardinia, which I plan to do in April. The route is about 320km (circa 200 miles) from Fertilia down the western coast of Sardinia to Cagliari. I still don’t know if I’ll do this trip in early April or late April, as I have other affairs in Italy to attend to too, such as starting a kayak company in Venice.

I’ve been looking at weather statistics, and it doesn’t really look that bad, at least not if the Sardinian weather this April behaves like it has in past Aprils.

Temperatures should be between 10° C and 15° C, and the water temperature 14°-16° C. The water will be warmer than the air most of the time.

Wind should be mostly W to NW and mostly in the range F2-F4, but on the average there’ll be 5-6 days during the month with F5 winds or stronger. There’s a 5% risk of having a day with winds of F7 or more. This trip will be the first time I paddle alone for longer distances, so I will probably be rather cautious and not venture out if the winds are F5 or stronger.

Waves should be around 1.5m the first 3 weeks of April, mostly E and with little variation throughout the day and night. This is not worse that what I have tried before, but I will probably get some surf landings unless I can find sheltered beaches. In late April the waves should fall a bit, to 0.8m-1.0m, with some variation during the day and the direction will be mostly ENE.

I’m already all eager to go, but there’s still some time

I’m heading back to Sardinia soon. My wife Valentina and I will spend the Easter holiday with my in-laws in Palermo, and immediately afterwards we’ll be on the ferry to Sardinia. We’ll spend almost a week with my good friend Francesco Muntoni in the Ogliastra region on the east coast of Sardinia. Valentina then returns to Denmark and I’ll start thinking about finishing my circumnavigation of the island.

I feel so incredibly lucky going back. The Golfo di Orosei is the most beautiful place I have ever paddled, and it’s going to be fantastic returning there.

Francesco Muntoni knows the area and he is going to be a brilliant guide, just like he has been to so many others. He runs Cardedu Kayak which organises guided tours in the area, including multi day trips with camping in the natural reserves in the area.

The photo is taken by Francesco’s wife when we first met him by chance on the water in early October. From left to right: Wendy, myself, Francesco and his son.

I have finally received an answer from the Poste Italiane (the usual word document attached to an empty email):

In riferimento alla sua e-mail del “07/01/2008” con Oggetto: «pacco estero», Le comunichiamo che per richieste di informazioni sull’esito di spedizioni inviate e/o in attesa, riguardanti il prodotto dei pacchi internazionali, si dovrà recare esclusivamente presso l’Ufficio Postale per la compilazione dell’apposito modello CN08 ( modello di reclamo internazionale) in quanto attualmente, per tali spedizioni, non è previsto alcun servizio di T. & T. e nessuna assistenza telefonica.

which is (more or less) in English:

With reference to your email of January 7, 2008, with the subject “pacco estero” [which wasn't the subject -rs], we can inform you that for requests for information on the whereabouts of missives sent and/or awaited, regarding international parcels, it is necessary exclusively to present oneself at the postal office to fill in the form model CN08 (model for international complaint) since at this time, for such missives, no service is foreseen by the T&T [probably Track&Trace -rs] and no telephonic assistance.

That’s Italian bureaucratic lingo for “f… you”.

I sent a parcel from Sardinia last October. I sent it to Palermo where it arrived after two weeks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t picked up by the recipient, so it was returned, but returned to where?

I’ve been hunting this parcel for over three months now, and I’m still none the wiser.

The kayak journey in Sardinia was my first ever long kayak trip, and I had packed way too much stuff. After about a weeks paddling I decided to send what I no longer believed I would need back to a good friend in Palermo, Giacomo della Gatta. On the first rest day, which happened to be at Torre di Bari near the inland city of Bari Sardo, I went through all my stuff, and pruned my luggage with a fairly rough hand. We got a lift to Bari Sardo, which was a few kilometres inland, and made a huge parcel of some boxes from a supermarket and ample quantities of duct tape.

I asked what I should use as a return address, since we weren’t going to stay there, and I was advised to give my Danish address as the return address. In case of a failed delivery the parcel would then be returned to Denmark, although at an additional cost.

A fairly huge parcel of almost 10kg cost only €7, which was quite astonishing. We had both expected it to be some €40-50 at least.

Anyway, off it went, into the unknown and mysterious bowels of the Italian postal beast.

We continued our journey and inquired a few times if Giacomo had received it, but no. Well, not to worry, nobody in their right mind would expect a parcel to arrive in less than a few weeks anyway. Not in Italy, at least.

When I returned to Palermo in early November and met Giacomo again, he told me that the parcel had arrived a week before, but since I had addressed it to a little used office of his company, he hadn’t been able to pick it up within the seven day limit given.

Giacomo had called the post office in Palermo to ask what would happen to the parcel, and they confirmed that the parcel had been returned. When asked where to, the answer was to Denmark. I called the toll free number a week later and got the same message. Everything should be fine then, as I was on my way back home too.

Back in Denmark, now in early December, I still hadn’t seen anything of the parcel. I then contacted the Danish mail to hear if they had any news on the parcel, but they had never heard of it. Over a month after it should have been returned, the parcel was apparently still somewhere in Italy.

I tried to call the toll free number again from Denmark, but it didn’t work. It seems the number only works within Italy, but the homepage of the Poste Italiane doesn’t give any other numbers to call. I then wrote an email, and after a week I got an answer: an empty email with a MS word document attached with two lines of text: please call the toll free number. Well, it doesn’t work.

I have since written the Italian mail once a week requesting a reply by email, but haven’t received any kind of responses after about a month of trying. My in-laws in Palermo have been calling the toll free number and talking to the post office in Palermo, and has only gotten the usual answer: the parcel has been returned to Denmark. Only it hasn’t.

In the last few days we have been able to get different responses, though. My in-laws was now told that the parcel had been returned to the post office in Bari Sardo from where it had been sent, but I called them today and they don’t know anything about it. It’s a very small post office, and they actually remembered me from back in October, and were quite certain that no such parcel had returned to them.

I have myself been calling the main corporate number of the Poste Italiane, and there I got the answer that they were way behind with answering correspondence that I would just have to wait until it got my turn. They wouldn’t be able to answer me in any way before they had worked off the backlog. According to the Italian press they do seem to have problems.

So, after three month I have gotten nowhere. The only factual information I have about the parcel is that it is not in Bari Sardo. I will be writing them once a week as I have been doing since before Christmas, but I’m losing faith that I will ever see that parcel again.

In spite of the journey being put on hold until April or May, Skim Kayaks has generously offered to continue to sponsor me for the remainder of the journey.

Foto by Alex Solbach

I’ve paddled the Skim Distance in Sardinia for four weeks in different conditions, and it is a brilliant expedition kayak. It is stable, fast and spacious. I consider myself lucky to be able to finish my journey in such a boat.

Weather conditions in Sardinia are very changeable, and in a couple of occasions I paddled in winds up to force 6 and waves of several meters, which is more than I have tried before, but I never felt unsafe or unstable in the Skim Distance.

The speed of the Skim Distance is incredible. I’m not the racing type, and I was astonished to discover that I could get a fully loaded Skim Distance to go at 10-11 km/h, and at 7-8 km/h sustained. It would be very interesting to see what a competitive and dedicated race paddler could get out of a Skim Distance.

The Skim Distance is also a surprisingly agile boat when unloaded. I’ve paddled it for two weeks in Venice in September, and in spite of its notable length it was very easy to get around, both in the smaller channels of the city, between the other boats and outside the city, in the lagoon.

My thanks to Skim Kayaks and to Göran Pehrson for their continued trust in me.

I have understood from a previous post that Wendy travels without a mobile phone, and hence have limited internet access. Here is how you get a mobile phone with internet access in Italy.

There are three mobile phone operators in Italy: TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile), Wind and Vodafone.

TIM has a red/blue logo, Wind is orange and Vodafone is red/white. They have affiliated shops all over, also in smaller towns. It should be easy to find a shop for one of them.

In the shop (there will likely be at least one person who speaks English or French) ask for a cheap mobile phone (telefonino economico) with a prepaid contract (prepagato) and internet access (accesso internet).

Un telefonino economico, prepagato con accesso internet.

Internet access can be with GPRS, EDGE or UTMS. The phone must have support for Bluetooth, but I guess all have by now.

They will ask for a document of identity, for example a passport. In some cases they will also ask for an address, where I have just given the address of a friend. They won’t send anything to the address anyway.

I don’t know how much the phone itself will cost, since I had an unlocked GSM phone with me to Italy, but phones aren’t that expensive anymore. My guess is that it should be possible to find a usable phone for €100.

The prepaid account costs €10 of which €5 are for talking.

Activating a new SIM card can sometimes take a while, so be prepared to wait for a couple of hours at this point, until the phone gets a signal when turned on. When the phone is connected, return to the shop.

Internet access requires a configuration on the phone to work. The people in the shop will do that if asked. It only takes a minute or two.

Mi serve la configurazione per l’accesso al Internet, per favore.

At this point the phone should be ready to go.

Internet access with the mobile network can be expensive in Italy, but there is a plethora of ever changing discounts, offers, incentives and so on. It should be possible to get a “100MB for €20″ deal or something similar. It depends on the operator.

The Nokia Nseries N800 Internet Tablet

For use with the Nokia Nseries N800 Internet Tablet a few steps are needed to get the tablet on the Internet through the phone.

As I have managed to fry the charging circuits on my own Internet Tablet, I cannot check the correctness of the description below. It is written from memory, so please excuse me if there are inaccuracies.

On the tablet, open the Connection Manager. It is in the “Applications” menu (third from the top on the left) select “Tools” and “Connection Manager”.

In the menu of the Connection Manager (menu at the top of the display) select “Phones” and a new window should appear. Click the “New” button and let the tablet find the phone. Don’t forget to enable Bluetooth on the phone first, or it won’t be found. Once the phone is found, select it and follow the instructions to connect the two devices. It will involve entering a numeric code on one device and then the same code on the other device. Its a one time thing so I haven’t done it all that often.

Once the phone and the tablet are connected (or paired as it is called), an internet connection can be set up through the phone.

Still in the Connection Manager, select “Connections” from the menu (it might be on a sub-menu, I’m not sure) and click “New”. Follow the instructions. The tablet should ask a series of questions about the connection, the phone and the operator. The connection is a “Packet data” connection, and it should be associated with the phone. The tablet will then ask about country, operator and such. When that is done, the tablet should be able to access the internet using the mobile phone.

That should (hopefully if my memory has served me well) suffice to get back in Beach Blogging mode.

The Nokia Nseries N800 Internet Tablet isn’t a very common device yet, so it is unlikely the local mobile phone shop will be able to help with the setup, but it doesn’t hurt asking.

The four weeks I paddled in Sardinia is the longest kayak journey I have been on so far, and the first time I have travelled for so long with somebody I knew so little.

Things went very wrong between Wendy and I, and I have quite naturally given it quite a bit of thought as to why. I’m not sure it necessarily had to end like that, had we been able to handle some problems and situations better during the time we travelled together.

All interpersonal relations are inherently complex, and it doesn’t get less complex by placing those relations in a context of sea kayaking in unknown territory for long hours each day, occasionally in difficult weather conditions, while living primitively on beaches and the like. The physical and psychological stress induced further complicates matters.

The following are my thoughts on some of the areas where I think Wendy and I didn’t do very well as a team.

Please try to read this more as a “mea culpa” than as a “j’accuse“. Being the less experienced paddler of the two of us, I probably made more and graver mistakes than Wendy. Also, this is NOT an attempt to get into an online shouting match, but an attempt to share some difficult and at times painful experiences, and hopefully, hear about the experiences of others in the comments. I want to learn to be a better team paddler, so I can prevent similar unpleasant events in the future.

Information for all

It is very important that all team members know exactly where they are, where they’re going, how far there is and what conditions to expect. It sounds obvious when written like that, but we didn’t do it. I should have make sure I always had the necessary information each time we started, but I didn’t.

We only had one map case which I usually left with Wendy, even though I was offered to carry it many times. I would often just have a quick glance at the map before we left in the morning, memorise the important parts and just paddle on that, relying on Wendy for all the details during the day.

One day in particular was really bad, in large part because I had acquired too little information about our whereabouts before we started, and I was unable to get more information as we paddled on. We were on our way from Costa Paradiso along the coast. All was calm and we were tired of sitting still, so we left on a whim in spite of a forecast of F5-6 NW winds, that is from the side.

We started, had a short break before Isola Rossa, and started again towards a headland down the coast. I had gotten the impression that it was about 5-6km away, an hours paddle, though it seemed further. I discarded that observation thinking it was just a bit of mist making it look more distant. We paddled for an hour, we got a bit more wind, Wendy paddled ahead as I slowed down because my back started to ache a bit. The headland seemed just as far away as when we started. I could only see an outline of the headland as I had the sun right in front of me.

We paddled for another hour, the headland was still just an outline towards the sun and still distant. The wind grew stronger, at least F5 with average waves of 1-2m from the right, and as I had to work harder in the waves my back really started to ache.

After about 3½ hours non-stop paddle the headland was closer, but I still couldn’t see anything on it because I was blinded by the sun, I didn’t really know where we were, if we were to land at the headland or not, the wind and waves kept pushing me around and I was in quite a bit of pain. At that point I gave up fighting the waves to keep the course, and let them carry me left towards the coast so I didn’t strain my back muscles so much, and then turned the boat up into the wind using the skeg, again so I could relax my back. That brought me far away from Wendy, who had been ahead of me all the time, and she had to return to look for me. We finally landed on a small beach just under the headland after almost 4 hours non-stop paddling in rough weather.

The worst part of it wasn’t even the rough weather or my back aches, it was not knowing anything. My information on distance had been false, we paddled 16km in 4 hours, not 5-6km in one hour. I didn’t expect the wind and waves to changes dramatically in one hour, but they did in 4 hours. I had no idea about our destination. Were we to land on the headland or not? I had no possibility to acquire new information during the paddle. I was constantly blinded by the sun, so I couldn’t see a thing on the headland in front of me. Was it build up or not, was there a harbour or not? Wendy was ahead of me and as my back got sore I couldn’t catch up with her. The wind growing in strength, most communication between us was impossible anyway.

Needless to say, it wasn’t a good day on the water.

I tried in the following week to make sure I knew what was going on, and I didn’t have bad days like that again. I’d say I’ve learnt to stay informed.

Follow the slowest

A team will have to follow the slowest. If it doesn’t it won’t be a team for long.

A corollary to this rule is that all team members must accept this without complaint. The slowest team member won’t be any faster by being corrected, coerced, left trailing the rest of the team or by any other means. It will only make that person feel miserable and therefore make the team function worse.

Then, who says the slowest team member won’t one day be you.

There are many possible reasons for being slow, and it doesn’t have to have anything to do with weakness. One can be slow because the clouds in the sky have interesting shapes, or because there are beautiful rocks to look at, or because one experiments with different paddling styles, or whatever happens to not propel one forward at maximum speed.

In the little team of Wendy and I the role of the slowest paddler changed often, sometimes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. I was often the slowest in the days when I had back aches, but not necessarily. I did leave Wendy behind one of those days, simply because the pain was such that I wanted to get off the water as soon as possible. I just ate the pain and paddled as fast as I could. Wendy was many times the slowest because she wanted to look at rock formations and explore little coves along the coast. On a few occasions I was playing, trying to go as fast as possible, forgetting about team paddling, and I ended up several kilometres ahead of Wendy who couldn’t keep up.

Being slow is not just a matter of paddling. I’m a slow starter in the morning. It takes me half an hour to wake up and get started. There’s nothing really I can do about it, at least not without inducing a completely unnecessary level of stress in my body. Wendy is off before her eyes are fully opened.

No matter what the context, the team will have to follow the slowest or dissolve.

Patience

Following the slowest means waiting. We both discovered that waiting is an essential part of team paddling, frustrating as it may be. Different persons have different speeds, and some will always wait for somebody else.

Waiting requires patience, and lots of it.

Inability to wait patiently for the other team members to get ready or come along will cause all sorts of tensions and stress in the team. It is very, very unpleasant having to do something with others hanging over you, hurrying on you or moving your stuff around in some misguided attempt to get you to pack your boat faster. In the end things will just go slower for it.

In that sense, patience is not a virtue in team paddling, it is a necessity. An constantly impatient person is inadequate as a team paddler.

In any case, one day you’ll want the others to wait for you, so just learn to be patient.

“Mock waiting”

One particular nasty expression of impatience in team paddling is what I call “mock waiting”. I think most of us have tried it, most of us have probably done it too without thinking about the consequences.

“Mock waiting” is when the faster paddler moves ahead at his/hers preferred speed, then waits until the slower paddler has almost caught up, just to start again immediately.

Sounds innocuous, right? Let’s see what it does to the two paddlers.

The faster paddler gets to paddle at a nice, pleasant pace of his/hers own choice, interrupted by occasional breaks. These breaks might be frustrating and annoying, they are after all interruptions and they do slow you down, but they’re nevertheless still breaks where muscles and mind can relax a bit.

The slower paddler, who is always behind, experience a psychological pressure to paddle a little faster than he/she would otherwise do in the given conditions. The faster paddler exerts a pressure to move on by always being ahead. Whenever the slower paddler catches up to the waiting faster paddler, he/she starts immediately, leaving the slower paddler no time for a break and a rest. As a consequence, the slower paddler works harder for longer, without any breaks and without catching up. It is, to say it mildly, very unpleasant.

It is so easy to do without thinking about it, but it is not so nice being the slower paddler who works hard to catch up just to be left behind again immediately.

“Mock waiting” is very destructive behaviour in a team. It constantly underlines that “I’m faster and you’re slower”, while it wears the slower paddler down physically too. It can drive the slower paddler into the ground, physically and psychologically.

Mutual respect

Much of the above boils down to mutual respect between team members.

If the team members respect each other and each other’s differences, much of the above won’t happen. Respect in my book means taking the other person seriously, letting the other person have his/hers say, listening to what the other says and expresses, and taking that into account when deciding what to do.

Much of what I have written above are the results of an inability to listen to each other or an inability to let what is said influence one’s behaviour and decisions.

The short conclusion of all these words can be: don’t paddle with persons you don’t respect and don’t paddle with persons you don’t believe respect you.

I’m in Palermo now.

I spent a couple of days in Fertilia, first to make up my mind, then to figure out what to do with all the gear I had there. The first night I slept in the open near the harbour where I had the kayak in sight. At that point I hadn’t decided to stop yet.

Monday morning I made my decision to stop and started thinking about all the practical matters of it.

The largest problem was the kayak. I had to be doubly sure about it because it isn’t really mine. It is on loan from Skim Kayaks in Sweden. It was sitting on a ramp in the little harbour of Fertilia and nobody complained about it. I made sure to go there regularly and be seen, so the people of the harbour had a chance to complain and so they could see it wasn’t just abandoned there.

I first tried to contact Costantino Lifrieri which we had met at Capo Falcone a few days earlier, but he was abroad. I then found the numbers for Francesco Muntoni, owner of Cardedu Kayaks which organises excursions on the east coast of Sardinia. Francesco came to to Fertilia the same evening to pick up the kayak. We loaded it on his car and had a pleasant evening over a pizza and a glass of wine.

Should anybody want to paddle for some days in Sardinia, contact Francesco at cardedukayak@tiscali.it. He knows his coastline to the last underwater rock, and he has kayaks and equipment for groups up to ten persons, all you need to bring is your beach clothes.

Since the ferry from Cagliari to Palermo only departs weekly, on Fridays, I had plenty of time. I therefore stayed one more day in Fertilia, packed and organised my gear without hurry, walked the 6 km to Alghero where I had a nice time. Alghero is a very nice little place, a Catalan city transplanted in Sardinia. Until about 100 years ago people still spoke a Catalan dialect, and the street signs are still bilingual.

Wednesday I had everything ready for departure. It is amazing how much you can fit into a kayak. All packed up I had three big IKEA bags with camping gear, paddling gear, normal clothes, photo equipment and other electronics and all the loose stuff.

I took a taxi from Fertilia to Alghero station, which was a very small place. So was the train. Fortunately, so was the ticket price too The baby train took me to Sassari, from where I had to take another train to Cagliari. That train look more like a real train.

I had expected to have the train almost for myself. Just how many people are supposed to travel from one end of Sardinia to the other on a Wednesday afternoon? Quite a few, I discovered. I had forgot about the dead.

Thursday November 1st is the day of the dead. It is a holiday in Italy and most people will visit their family tombs. With Thursday off, everybody would then “fare il ponte”, meaning they would take Friday off too and have a nice long holiday. So, I traveled just before a four day weekend and of course the train was absolutely stuffed. Good thing I got on board early with all my stuff so I didn’t have to do my four hours in train with three full IKEA bags on my lap.

I did have a nice ride, though. I chatted with an elderly lady who got off at San Gavino, and with a woman from San Domenico who got off a bit earlier. I also saw several Nuraghe along the way, especially around Marcomer where there are over 200 of them according to one person on the train.

My phone died on the train. Costantino called me on the train, and the battery just went dead in the middle of our conversation. It did present me with a small problem. I was supposed to call Francesco Ravasio of Cagliari on my arrival. He would pick me up at the station, so I could get my motorcycle which was parked at his home. Without my phone I couldn’t contact him and he couldn’t contact me. We’d never met before and didn’t know how to recognise each other.

On the station of Cagliari I stopped in the bar, had a beer with Tony and Tonino who had helped carry all my gear, and asked if I could recharge my phone there for a moment. “Eh beh, ma, sorry, but we cannot, no”. I went on the search for another place to nourish my phone. The station is rather small, but after a while I found the station chapel open, and there was an outlet just besides the altar, so I sat down in the chapel, charged my phone and wrote a bit in my diary. When the priest came to ready for mass at 8, I had a chat with him but left before mass to meet Francesco.

Francesco came in his small BMW Smart. It is a very small car, my three IKEA bags hardly entered, and we had to drive with the rear door open because my Avatak paddles were too long to fit in. When we arrived at his home he just parked it across on half a parking space.

I had a very pleasant two days in Cagliari. I stayed in a hotel, my phone ran out of money and wouldn’t accept new payments and the hotels wifi-service was abysmal. I did, however, have a splendid time with Francesco. I had all my gear at his place, we had dinner together both evenings, once in the very good Trattoria del Porto, and we went paddling together at Poetto and Capo Sant’Elio. Wendy and I had passed there on the very first day of our trip, but in rougher weather. This day was completely calm and we could paddle right under the sandstone cliffs.

Francesco has been paddling for over 20 years, as one of the very first sea kayakers in Sardinia. He also has a knack for working wood, and he has made an exact replica of his P&H Sirius, strip built. It is quite a marvel, and it paddles very well I was a bit amazed that he would let me paddle it, but he was glad to see it used, he insisted.

My ferry departed on Friday evening. I packed up all my gear on the motorbike, except the paddles which Francesco drove to the harbour for me. We were just in time. I got my ticket less than an hour before departure (one of the advantages of driving a motorcycle – there’s always room for one more on the ferry), and embarked less than half an hour before.

The ferry crossing was utterly boring and eventless.

As mentioned previously, I have had some problems with my Telecom Italia Mobile prepaid mobile phone account. It ran out of money, I put in €50 and was told my account was still at €0.

My assumption was that the payment had somehow failed.

I spent hours on the Internet and on the phone to figure out what had happened. In the end I had to go to a TIM service point to get help. The fellow there weren’t very helpful. I just had to call 119 to get help, but I had spent hours there the day before. Then he did the call and got me an operator, or rather an operatrix.

“Your account is empty” she told me. “I’ve just put in €50″. “Yes, but you still have to put in at least another €110 to use your phone”.

According to TIM I have run up a deficit on my prepaid account by using the Internet. I find it rather weird that I can make a deficit on a prepaid account, and frankly, it seems to be TIMs problem if they have delivered services I haven’t requested. I don’t see how I can have obligations beyond the amount I have prepaid.

The agreement on a prepaid account is exactly that I pay in advance, and TIM stops the services as soon as my account reaches €0. That way both parties are sure there will be no unpaid balance, no debts incurred and no money to collect afterwards. I’ve used TIM’s services on that assumption, that once the money was gone my connection would be shut down. That gave me a safety that expenses would run out of hand. TIM, on the other hand, has broken the agreement by not stopping their services as the money ran out, and I don’t believe they can hold me accountable for whatever they believe they have provided in excess of my payment.

The account ran into deficit because I had used the Internet on a “€20 for 100Mb traffic” deal, but that deal ran out without any warning whatsoever, and TIM then switched me over to their default “€6 per Mb” tariff. That ate the credit on my account in a split second, but they didn’t terminate my access as they should have. They just let me go on, until my account was over €156 in the red. According to TIM my “€20 for 100Mb” (€0.2/Mb) deal has in fact become a “€176 for 126Mb” (€1.4/Mb) deal, which is quite a difference.

Let this be a warning if you intend to use mobile Internet in Italy with TIM. You might not get the deal you bargain for, due to their slightly less than honest and transparent business methods.

TIM has lost a customer for good here.

I have a TIM sim card in my mobile phone here in Italy. It’s a pre-paid card, so I have to ‘recharge’ it regularly.

I did that today. I bought a €50 card, scratch the field to get the number, call the service and enter the number. I get a message that it went well. I get an SMS that the transaction succeeded and that my credit is now €0.

€0 ???

I paid €50 for that card, it should be worth more.

I have now tried to get in touch with TIM customer service for hours. Their website is completely useless, all promotional stuff and no real information. Their phone service is pure waste of time. You’re listing to one stupid menu after the other until you’re about to vomit just at the thought of the oh so sweet female voice.

There is absolutely no way of getting through to a real operator to get some help. At most you can get “Virtual assistance”. Apparently TIM has no concept for “Real assistance”.

This is probably the last time I will have a TIM sim card in my phone.