TIM CLARO CPF
So the saga continues ...lol. Although, I must say that if I couldn't just use my friend's CPF, it would have been properly infuriating. Long story short, even though my CPF is valid and 'regular' (whatever that means, that's what it said in the Pessoa Fisica App), I still haven't managed to activate a Claro, TIM or VIVO SIM card with it. And it will soon be a year that I got my CPF, it’s not like I’m rushing things…
To summarise, in the first few (about 10...!) months, the CPF didn't seem to get recognised by the operators. I had (obviously) tried immediately after obtaining the CPF in April (or March, I would have to check), that didn't work. I got an error message about my CPF not being valid, or not being recognised. Well, my 180 days were almost up anyway, so I let it be and tried again after coming back in November. I hoped that by then the operators’ systems were hopefully updated with the “latest” CPF numbers. No, still the same error messages about the CPF number not existing or not being recognised by their system. As mentioned, I could thankfully just use a friend’s number to activate my card, otherwise that would have started to being slightly unnerving…
But then, I gave it another try and all of a sudden, my CPF was ok. That’s when I got the other error, about the CEP not corresponding to the one being associated with my CPF (which made me start this thread...) That was with Claro, and since none of you guys ever had a similar experience, I thought that I’ll try VIVO instead of Claro, and I could always try with another CLARO SIM card later. Also, I remembered that the Claro SIM had been purchased in April and that I had tried to activate it then, so maybe that was the reason for the problem with this particular card.
And with VIVO, it seemed to go well: Immediately after inserting the SIM card I started receiving questions in order to activate the SIM. It was the type of messages you get when you send for example *544# (i.e. you get asked questions and have to answer by typing the number corresponding to the correct answer, as in a multiple choice style dialogue). One of the first questions was obviously to enter your CPF, and VIVO seemed to recognise it immediately. But right after this one (and maybe a few more, I really don't remember it), it asked me to choose between three choices, and unfortunately I don't remember 100% what the question was, but I'm pretty sure that it asked me to enter the area where I was residing (here in Brazil). Unfortunately none of the proposed choices was Bahia, so I just tried with the first option, thinking that I could always choose option 2 and 3 if the the first was wrong. Unfortunately, that's not how it worked...after choosing 1, I got an error message (wrong answer), but there was no going back. At this point, all I could do was to get was a message that activation had failed, and that I should call VIVO to activate my SIM card.
I can't believe how complicated it can be to just get a prepaid mobile SIM to work..Of course I'm aware that most people don't have this kind of problems, but it can happen, and it could really drive you crazy. Like that one time when I called CLARO customer service to see if I could activate it on the phone, but I didn't speak PT well enough, so I chose English in the language menu, and after that, it said to go to a Claro shop and find someone there who speaks English... (at least that message was in English…)
For now, just like last April, my 90 days will be used up next week, and at this point, I don't want to spend more time on SIM cards, because I don't know when I'll be back, and as far I know, they expire if they aren't used for 3 or 6 months.
But I will be coming back, and then I'm going to be trying it again. And let's say Claro gives me again the same error about my CEP, is there really no way to get to see my data (those that are saved to my CPF profile, including the CEP...)?
Cheers
Kurt