Unless you were forewarned about this change, this is a bunch of crap. Your daughter should have been given the ability to turn on this option.
This would have been $100/month, so still much more expensive than installing a new SIM. Plus it’s more convenient for her to have an Italian phone number while she’s in Italy.
I’d actually prefer not to share. But I concur on the stupidity. And from what I’ve been told by agents, this isn’t the first time they’ve had this issue.
Again, completely concur. She did have to go into her account to enable international usage before her trip, but due to the 2FA texting issue she couldn’t get back into the account to re-enable it when it was disabled. But yeah, the software engineer who decided storing people’s current profiles & copying them back in after the upgrade was just too much trouble for him should get fired.
$50 for Italian SIM versus $100 to use your US phone.
For me, the Pros for keeping US phone plan are:
- You do not need an unlocked phone (needed for Italian SIM)
- All my current installed apps on my phone work seamlessly.
- All my current apps which send codes for two factor verification work seamlessly
- All my documents / photos stored on my phone / account work seamlessly
- I do not have to wait to buy a sim - phone starts working right when I land.
- Uber works in Rome and Milan, (uber does not work in other places) and you can use it right off the bat.
All the above for $50 (the difference between US and Italian plan) is a great deal for me.
I have seen people communicate more by apps like Telegram in Italy. Not sure how an Italian phone number is more helpful
Why?..
I’m a little confused by OP’s story. I spent a decent bit of time looking at small local banking institutions and cannot find any that do not have either a published non-800 number, or an explicitly published number for international calls. This includes two old local company-based credit unions that have in one case fewer than 4000 members and less than $40m in assets, and has only one branch which is located in rural Virginia. Can anyone find any bank that doesn’t publish either a local number or an international number?
If it’s the “Bank of <small_town_with_unique_name>”, then it may be a bit more location info than someone might want to share.
Are you really saying, “I don’t believe the OP, who says that, even once they checked with their bank, they were told that their only customer service phone number is a US-only toll free number”? Because, if so, you spent a fair amount of time and research trying to make that point.
Yes, I am saying it appears he is suggesting something that is not a practice among American financial institutions.
Including–and I checked several of these, several of the smallest Credit Unions in the country, including the glorious: Arkansas AM & N College Federal Credit Union - a CU with less than 1,000 members and less than $3m in assets has a published number you can reach from overseas.
Also I’m not sure that the phone system even works the way described, while I’m still researching it, I think every 1-800 call is actually routed to a local phone number, there is no true “first line service” for a 1-800, at least according to the FCC write up on them:
What Is a Toll-Free Number and How Does it Work? | Federal Communications Commission (fcc.gov)
Also, acquiring a 1-800 number is actually more work than just publishing a local number, it would be highly unusual a financial institution big enough to acquire a 1-800 number wouldn’t publish an internationally accessible number–which could just be the local U.S. number (which any normal local U.S. number can be called from abroad, just not obviously toll free), what a lot of bigger banks have setup is a “international” toll free number, which I would not expect a small bank to have. But the claim that a bank has a facility that is only reachable by 1-800 number appears to not be how our phone system works.
If I am mistake no that I look forward to being educated on the matter.
“I can’t find a bank that works that way” is not the same as “there is, literally, no bank that works that way.” You’re trying to pick holes in the OP’s story, for no apparent reason other than “it makes no sense to me, so, thus the OP must be lying.”
I’m not saying anyone is lying, I am saying it does not appear accurate that there could be a situation as OP described.
As I said, multiple times, the 800 number is apparently the only way to reach the central customer service center. I was told this by both a representative at the customer service center, and a representative at a branch. You can call a branch directly on a regular non-toll free number, which is (presumably) accessible from Italy, and they can help you with things like looking at your balance, seeing if a deposit went through, etc. What they cannot do is help you with why you can’t log into your account via the app, or why your debit card is apparently frozen. I did ask if they could transfer from a branch to the central customer service and was told, no, they cannot. So that’s all the information I have. So maybe the people I spoke to were wrong, and had I spoken to someone else they would have given me a non-toll free number that went to customer service, or maybe they could have transferred me from a branch to customer service. But maybe there are more things in heaven & earth, Martin_Hyde, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I don’t know what happened in your case, customer service staff can frequently give out confusing or bad information.
But just because this is FQ, I wanted to investigate the possibility of a 1-800 number being the only way to call a specific phone system, and it appears the FCC says that is not the case:
Calls to each toll free number are routed to a particular local telephone number.
That is from the FCC link above. If the FCC is correct, which I think it is fair to presume they are correct on matters relating to the phone system, a 1-800 number routes calls to a local number, so a local number for the call center, as a factual matter, must exist.
As to the claim that this specific bank does not publish its local phone number anywhere at all, including when a customer needs it, I find unsubstantiated. The fact that it could be easily substantiated by telling us the name of the financial institution means if this was true it would be easy to demonstrate. If you’re saying you don’t want to demonstrate it is true when the proof would be easy to offer, that would mean the only fair way to look at that assertion is that it’s an unsubstantiated factual claim. This thread is about how to send money to Italy so no reason to discuss it further, but given that it is FQ, I do think it is worthwhile to point out the claim that there is a U.S. bank call center that can only be reached by 1-800 number appears to not be factually possible.
If I restate my claim as “The only customer service phone number the bank publishes on their website is a toll free number not accessible from Europe, and the customer service representatives I personally spoke to both at a branch and at the customer service center, do not know a local number that goes to their customer service”, will that satisfy you? Or should I just have told my daughter stuck an hour away from her place of residence, hoping she has enough cash to get a bus back (she did), “Gee honey, it’s impossible that there’s no phone number that you can use to reach the bank from Italy, so I won’t provide any further assistance until I get to the bottom of that.”
Exactly.
Moderator Note
If the bank chooses not to give out the local number, then there is no way for the customer to know what local number that 1-800 number is tied to. The fact that there has to be a local number associated with the 1-800 number is irrelevant.
This is getting to the point of badgering the OP. Drop it and move on, please.
A question for the OP: Do you know if the bank actually does their own card processing, or is it outsourced to a 3rd-party? In the latter case, the 3rd party might be anywhere in the country, and nobody will know their local number, wherever they are. In fact, it’s probably not a published number.
The OP’s issue is resolved, but this is a good reason to have multiple accounts with different institutions so you are not dependent on a single one. This may be impractical for a young person who may not have enough funds to meet minimum balance requirements, but some online banks have low or no minimum requirements. I travel with a second ATM card I don’t intend to use, but it is with me if I need it.
Agree, and places like Italy which are full of thieves, its better to have emergency debit/credit cards hidden. And to have cash distributed in 3 or 4 places (like socks, inner pockets, etc etc)
Not mine. On the debit card there is a toll-free and an “international collect call” number with a 925 AC which is East Bay, mostly Contra Costa and Alameda counties. On the credit card are two toll-free numbers, one for customer service and the other for fraud.
And all V/MC does on a transaction is act as a conduit – it is the issuing bank that makes the yea or nay decision on the transaction.
I don’t know. However the 800 number I have is for the bank, not a card processor - they can look up your checking, savings, mortgage, etc info, not just issues with your debit card. And they only have live agents available during extended business hours - 8AM - 6PM weekdays, shorter hours on weekends.
Thanks for the response. Sounds like your bank has its own call center for all services, including cards. My bank transfers all card-related issues to the card processor company, which is located several states away.