Plus, even if this article did apply to you, Vodafone only requires that customers present one document from the list. It says nothing about an AFM (Greek tax number) or permanent address.

It’s actually not the Greek government’s fault. They already signed cell phone registration into law before you were here and had no problem going forward, but the unions and cell phone companies resisted implementation. So if you’d like to blame someone, aim it at the latter. Faulting people is pointless though because that’s how Greece is.

P.S. The last time you made a comment, you said there was no problem because the Cosmote guy gave you his contact details and said he’d register for you.

Example: 1313, but call from Canada

Someone gave me 697-100-1313, it works but charges me like Calling Moble Phone @ $0.12 cad/min…..I do not want to pay them for being on hold until they come on the line and continue paying while they are helping me, it will add up. I have 1000 min per month to call Greece Landlines and would like to use them since I pay for them.

I am also mad because when I was in Greece this past Summer (Summer 2009), I went in to Register it at a Cosmote Shop and Germanos and they told me I can’t and don’t need to yet. I told them I live in Canada and may not be back in Greece by the Deadline……they did not care and blamed it on the Government saying that the Law may not even be enforced. I gave my number to many Agencies and other people that I need to keep in touch with and this is going to cause a lot of problems. I have my Greek Mobile Forwarded to my Canadian Number so that someone in Greece would not be charged long distance to contact me and when I see that they called I call them back from my Canadian Phone.

Great going Greek Government!!!

So I guess, I am now considered as a drug dealer, an immigrant smuggler and a blackmailer. Well, if I was in that business, business would be so good I would not need to live in Canada……I would be living the good life in Greece. How the hell am I going to register my phone if I do not go to Greece for a while?

a) A 19% value-added tax (VAT), which is a consumption tax assessed to all applicable goods and services. This is included in your 10 euros of talk time. If it wasn’t included, you would technically be asked to pay an additional 1.90.
b) Mobile telephony tax, which is a tax assessed to the privilege of using your mobile provider service (not the air time itself).
c) A 12% tax assessed as of September 15, 2009, which is best described as a state tax that isn’t included in the price of your top-up card and goes to the government treasury.

Taxes on cell phones and mobile broadband services in Greece are some of the highest in the world, with monthly subscribers paying up to 51% tax because taxes are added on top of other taxes. I hope that answers your question satisfactorily, since Vodafone couldn’t help you.

More than a decade ago, Greece required that all prepay/pay-as-you-go subscribers identify themselves. This was the norm, and it had nothing to do with security, safety or terrorism. This is why I don’t need to submit my identity again; they already know who I am. Then it was changed to letting users be anonymous.

There’s nothing stupid or wrong with going back to the way it used to be since a lot of countries demand this, and Greece used to be one of them. What I and many find ridiculous is bills/laws in Greece get signed and announced with virtually no notice to the parties concerned, PLUS no clear parameters upon which these parties can build policies and processes to relay to the public, PLUS somewhat unreasonable deadlines.

As an example of what I’m saying, the government announced in May that an AMKA was mandatory, had no Web site or printed literature on what it was, to whom it applied and how to get one. Thus, staff were unprepared to assist 9 million people, and 9 million people could care less about complying within 90 days in summer.

In other cases, Greece refuses to implement directives with crystal clear parameters and processes for five years or more. For example, long-term EU-wide permits for non-EU citizens who earned it, opening closed professions, recognizing university degrees, breaking monopolies, shutting down coal-burning plants and illegal landfills for which it is being fined millions of euros. Oh, I could go on and on… Are we really going to whine and bicker about phone identity?

Sometimes people are incompetent and lazy; some don’t read the news and haven’t a clue what’s going on in their own country. But sometimes the most competent, energetic people cannot do their jobs within a system full of loopholes and people constantly trying to cheat it.