Vodafone almost completely eliminates the €20 recharge to make way for the €20 Giga Ricarica. Here’s what changes for users and what to pay attention to
New recharge sizes, old system: Vodafone does away with the standard 20 euro recharge and replaces it with the Giga Ricarica 20, which for the price of 20 euro offers 19 euro of traffic and a paid promotion consisting of 5 GB of additional data for a month.
The new Giga Ricarica 20 has been available for a few days in physical stores, tobacconists, bars and Lottomatica and SisalPay points. Since July 14, 2020, the Giga Ricarica 20 is also available through the “recharge at checkout”, a function with which you can enter the cost of the recharge in the receipt of the shopping at the supermarket. Then, starting from today, it is also possible to buy a 13 euro standard top-up (with 13 euro of real traffic) through the “cash top-up”. Finally, the 20 euro standard top-up is no longer even among the available options of the My Vodafone app.
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Giga Ricarica: all the cuts available today
So far, there are three cuts for the Vodafone Giga Ricarica: the first, Giga Ricarica 5, costs 5 euros and offers 4 euros of phone traffic plus 5 gigs of data traffic; the second, Giga Ricarica 10, costs 10 euros and offers 9 euros of phone traffic plus 5 gigs of data traffic; the third, Giga Ricarica 20, costs 20 euros and offers 19 euros of phone traffic plus 5 gigs of data traffic. The additional data traffic can be accumulated in case of purchase of two Giga Ricarica within 24 hours.
Recharge Vodafone: 20 euros only with PIN in clear
The standard 20 euro Vodafone recharge has not disappeared completely: there is still a recharge mode, the “PIN in clear”, which allows us to spend 20 euros and have 20 euros of real traffic. With the PIN in clear mode (which is also available in the 5 and 10 euro denominations) the merchant will print a receipt with a 16-digit numerical code. The user will then have to call 42010 and communicate this code to complete the recharge.
Agcom against special recharges
Finally, it should be remembered that this type of “special” recharges, in which the amount paid does not exactly correspond to the traffic offered, have long been in the sights of AGCOM, i.e. the Autorità Garante del Mercato e della Concorrenza. The AGCOM, in December 2019, warned Tim, Vodafone and Wind from continuing to offer these top-ups. Vodafone’s response was not to eliminate the Giga Ricarica, but to restore the standard recharges while offering a refund procedure if the user proves that he accidentally made a Giga recharge instead of the normal one.