We had the same thing happen on our first trip to Italy. Not only did my ATM card not work, my phone wasn't working either, though we had contacted AT&T twice and they assured us my phone was unlocked.

Fortunately, my daughter used her phone to connect to Skype via internet, and we called my credit union from there. They were very apologetic and all and fixed the issue immediately (I had called and told them we were going to be in France and Italy.)

When I called AT&T, they replied, "well, your phone is unlocked, but you have to buy an international plan." Seriously? We called you twice to make sure we could use the phone in Italy and you didn't realize that was an INTERNATIONAL destination???? Sigh...

Good news is, has not happened on any subsequent trip. And I only carry one ATM card and one credit card. Just lucky, I guess!

Thanks for the collect call info, all!

Re the OP's strange and terrible saga... sad. Change banks as you are currently dealing with morons.

Very similar incident with my card, after I had notified the bank, of course. I had by netbook with me and shot off an e-mail to the bank and got a response the next morning with quite an apology. From then on, all was fine.

And Kerouac, when I travel to Europe, I always do a running trip report on Facebook, posting every day, so at least for me, Facebook does indeed work when I post from other countries.

A few years back my atm card would not work at Heathrow on arrival. I was traveling with others they were able to cover my share of the arranged car ride to London. A few hours later I was able to use an atm in London without a problem. A London friend thought it was some sort of time thing..perhaps accounting for a time difference between the usa and my arrival in London; some one at my bank thought it was due to my use of a plain old atm rather than a debit atm.. I don't know what caused the problem, but I had no further problems on that trip and used the atm more than once..i haven't had a problem since, though I do call the card company in advance.