Talk:Greece/@comment-32636578-20190725182505

Last year I had no trouble topping up my wife's Frog Mobile account on the CosmOTE website before leaving for Greece. This year it's not working. Every attemp with Chase shows the usual progress and the Verified by Visa says the charge was accepted. But then CosmOTE says the top up was not successful.

I contacted Chase and they say they can see the transaction and tell me they confirmed the charge in the Verified by Visa process. They tell me that it is CosmOTE that is rejected the payment. I also tried a MasterCard from Capital One and its different verification process. Again I see the accepted message before CosmOTE message that the payment was rejected. My conclusion is that CosmOTE has changed something in their process and is rejecting my US cards due to some security concern.

I have considered calling CosmOTE customer service and trying to top up directly with them, but it's no longer so important that my wife's Greek number be able to make calls. Since it's been less than 12 months from the last top up, she can still receive calls if needed at the airport in Athens.

It's no longer possible to get a top up card from any kiosk I have tried. It's not that hard for me to take a short walk to Germanos and refill both my wife's phone and my WiFi hotspot. My wife has had the same Greek phone number for many years, but all her relatives in Greece now tend send messages and make calls via WhatsApp.

The only reason I will keep our cards active is to get relatively cheap data during the summer promotions. The prices are good and we spend much time on islands away from WiFi.