Several years ago while in France, my VISA card was blocked and I was instructed to call them. Boy was that merchant in Compiegne dismayed as he had altered the merchandise, and it was almost closing time. His English was as limited as my French. Apparently someone in San Francisco, perhaps from a restaurant or store, had attempted to use my account number for a fraudulent telephone jewelry purchase to be sent to an address other than mine. The merchant was suspicious and contacted VISA. The thief tried again the next day for an even larger purchase and that is when VISA put the alert on my account.

From Compiegne I had to pay the merchant to first call VISA in London, I don't know why, but that is the number that the merchant called, and then several other expensive calls before I finally got the number here. The 800 number on my card was no good as you can't call it from another country.

I have just spent about 20 minutes on the phone with VISA attempting to get an emergency (free) number in case we have card problems or heaven forbid, loose a card. VISA _finally_ gave me a number to call collect.

Question ..... do I have to call the Paris operator and give the number for the collect call or do I dial it myself. In that case I need the complete U.S. code to call from France to the U.S. I have the entire U.S. VISA phone number, including area code.

Every time I travel outside of my home area, I notify VISA so that there is no unusual spending pattern which would effect my account. I had told them in advance about the above trip, but they were only checking on the suspected fraud.

Thanks,

Nina

Sorry abut the "is t" in the heading. I would have paid case, but it was a large purchase and I didn't have enough in cash or travelers check with me.

Dial the AT&T access code for the country you are in and then dial 0 for operator and make your collect call. For example in France it is: 0-800-99-0011, for Germany it is 0-800-225-5288 etc. You can get the codes for all countries at the AT&T website.

Larry J

Making those collect calls are too complicated.

I recently needed to make an emergency trip to France to take care of a relative. I needed to make a lot of calls back to the US. Some of them could have been made collect. Instead, I bought a calling card for 7E which provided me with over 500 France to US minutes. They had cards which cost even less. Since you had a bad experience before that you want to avoid, if I were you, I would buy a calling card and would keep it with me. That way I would have a way to contact anyone back in the US or even somewhere else in France for pennies per minute. It is great for emergencies and doesn't cost much if you don't use it.

Are you actually notifying "VISA" or do you mean you notify the bank who issued your card? I've never had a problem getting a number for collect calls when I call the Customer Service # for the bank who issued my card (ie. MBNA, Capital One, etc).

Why would you need to go thru AT&T for a collect call? Why wouldn't you just dial 0 and tell operator you need to make a collect call? Is that a language issue?..

Travelnut - I should have said that I have th phone number for the issuing bank - Chase instead of VISA. That's a catch-all word like Kleenex and Scotch tape.

Before I posted, I called AT&T for the codes, etc. and was told to get _that_ info in Paris, as AT&T didn't have/know the U.S. country code!! RIGHT - go back to your coffee break, sorry I bothered you.

Hi Nina,

On the back of my Visa card it gives a phone number to call collect from outside the US.

To dial the US from France you dial 00 to get out of France, 1 to enter the US.

Thus, 001 then the number.

collect call in France is called "payable a l'arrivee"

Thanks for all the info. Ira, my Visa card was issued a few years ago and it has been through at least one bank change, possibly two. That's why I called to make sure that I had the correct number.

The rep at first knew absolutely nothing about the number or procedure. After MUCH prodding, he finally asked someone else. Then I was given another number - for Chase.

Why on earth would I expect Visa to be any different from any other 8 year old customer rep??? (but I always do!)

A collect call in France is called "un appel en PCV". They had been eliminated for a while for calls within France, but have now been reinstated.