So…my US credit card expired and they sent a new one to my daughter’s address in the US and she forwarded it to me. I need to activate it, which entails phoning a US 1-800 toll-free number. If I call from my Taiwan Mobile phone number, will it still be toll-free for me? I should really know this but I almost never use my phone for actual phone calls.
In high school I was learning BASIC and playing Zork on an Apple IIe that the “cool” friend in our group had, if that gives you an idea how old I am and why I’m tech impaired now
No it won’t be toll free it will be an intl call. Young people don’t really use phone lines to call people so I don’t reckon they’ll be able to help you with this Q. Luckily I’m not young nor old so can step into the breach.
This sucks because the only two options they give for activating the card are 1) Use their mobile app, which “isn’t available in your country”, or 2) visit blahblah.com/activate, which I did and it promptly said I needed to call the 1-800 number. Sigh…
The other thing you can do, is have your daughter call that 1-800 #.
Most of those #s are automated credit card activation. No person answers it.
Just a computer asking for the 16-digit credit card # and maybe the 3-digit number on back, or your last 4 digits of SS#.
You can use Skype or Google Hangout VIA mail page to make international phone calls. All calls to the United States are free with Google hangout.
All toll free calls to the US are free on Skype and Google Hangout.
I called the Poison control Center once when my children were little via the 800 number.
And I believe American long-distance companies have local access numbers here in Taiwan that you can dial to use your local credit card for make toll free call.
At least they did when I first came here.
I’ve been using Skype and Google Hangouts for a while.
So I’m finally getting around to this because now I need to call a US toll-free number for my credit card. Google Hangouts is now Google Chat and doesn’t have the phone call feature. So I tried Skype and, although I already have an account, I have no credit and it won’t let me make a toll-free call without credit.
However, the process to add credit is convoluted. I had to send copies of my Taiwan ID and am now waiting for them to verify. Is this normal?
By the way, when you select the language as English, this is what you get…
EDIT: OK, I got it figured out. When I tried to initially make my 800 call, I guess it was set to call Taiwan and not the US, which triggered all of this add credit/send ID stuff. When I set the calling destination to the US, everything went through. Now I just have a “30 minute wait” for customer service, sigh…
That’s what the above screenshots are, Skype. I tried calling the 800 number but it wouldn’t go through, said I needed Skype credits, registration with Taiwan’s version of Skype/PChome, send ID, etc.
After I did all of that I discovered that the destination field for my call was automatically set to Taiwan. When I changed it to US then it let me call the 800 number no problem. So it was my stupid mistake.
Kind of weird that you can’t opt out though, when you’ve had a Skype account from another country in another currency for over a decade and you just want to top up your credit or add a new card (I didn’t have any Taiwanese bank cards at the time and, if I remember correctly (and I might not be), it wouldn’t accept foreign cards).
Imagine the mayhem if all those foreigners just use their Taiwanese credit card to to up any old Skype account and then run away with all those credits!
For everyone else who wants to an international call once in a while, I can recommend Viber. It’s not free but cheap and you can use any debit or credit card to pay for credits.
