I had just moved to Germany, and immediately after we had our residence papers, my wife and I went to the Telekom shop downtown (Spitalerstr. 9) to buy SIMs and sign up for service. The guy at the other shop signed us up, inserted the SIMs, and said they would activate in about 20 minutes as soon as their systems caught up with our subscription. So we went back home, and of course, several hours later, there was still no service.
The next day I visited this Telekom shop on Heußweg in Eimsbüttel to see what was going on. The guy who helped me was named Tom, and he was very friendly and spoke English, which was fantastic. He figured out that we had failed our credit check (obviously, since we had just moved here), and that the guy who signed us up the day before had typed in my passport number wrong, and left out my work registration number. So basically, the other guy cocked it up, and we had to start over.
The shop was empty at 9:30 (opening time) when I visited, and Tom worked quickly to scrap our old plan, set up a new one with the correct details, and then waited the 20 minutes for the SIMs to activate. He even gave me access to the shop's wi-fi so I could send a couple of emails while I waited.
I guess one could review the relative merits and performance of Telekom vs. other carriers, but I found this shop very clean and comfortable, and its employees extremely helpful and accommodating. I'll definitely come here first next time there's an issue. read more