I just moved to Italy for my job with the military. I am running into a lot of problems really quickly with accounts and such that all require me to call a 1-800 number that can not be called on my cell phone.
This evening, in an attempt to keep Capital One from closing an account on me due to "suspicious activity," I called an international collect number from my cell phone. After 20 minutes on hold, when my call dropped, I received a text saying that I had run out of money on my account. I went to a vodafone store and learned that regardless of the collect call, vodafone still charges .60 euro for connection and 1 euro for every minute... that was a 20 euro call that did not fix anything.
I have also not received my federal or state tax return from the previous year. I filed late due to being on deployment, and sent in my returns by certified mail. I checked and the federal taxes never received the mail, and although the state taxes received the return I still have not been paid back. This is around 5k tied up and I can not find any way to contact them other than phone.
I looked into using a calling card, but they say specifically on them that you can not use them to call a collect number.
How do you deal with these issues internationally???
