It's country specific and perhaps company specific...

I went into a TIM store, I needed a form called a coda fiswcale or something like that although my friends on www.prepaidgsm.net have a section which explains how to generate your own cf...they took a few minutes to work with me to set up voicemail with the prompts in English and also the menu prompts in English...explained how to top up at a tabac and it cost me €10 with €5 worth of credit...the experience was totally painless, efficient and when I left the store, the phone was functioning perfectly.

Since I have remote call forwarding on my landline, I then set it up to all calls to my landline were forwarded to my new Italian sim and voila I was in business.

Write down your (unofficial - but that's all you need as non-Italian resident) codice fiscale using code generator and hand it to the shop staff when buying and activating your SIM card. They can generate the same from your passport information on their computerized till, but it's better to handle language difficulties before arriving (e.g. how do you say your birth country in Italian, if it happens to be Outer Mongolia?)

All of this gives me a head ache. I am so happy that I never feel the need to have a phone when on vacation. For everyone else it is fine, but it is not for me.

yipper