[thaumasiotes]

> So if you break your phone overseas, you either need to live without banking and a range of other services, or book an immediate flight back to your home country just to provision a new eSIM.

I have these services connected to a Google Voice number.

[idontwantthis]

Not every service will let you use VoIP. Capital One for example.

[thaumasiotes]

Capital One is one of the services that I have connected to my Google Voice number.

[idontwantthis]

They wouldn’t let me activate a card with one. They wouldn’t even let me activate my card with a phone number that wasn’t the primary on a family plan.

[thaumasiotes]

I probably connected the number before their anti-voip policy was enacted. This is true in a number of places. They have no policy against using a voip number; they just hope you won't register one.

I might try a couple of things:

1. Call Capital One customer service and yell at them.

2. Go visit them in person somewhere and yell at them. Bring a phone that rings when they dial the number.

3. Register a carrier number with them, and then, behind Capital One's back, port that number to your Google Voice account.

> They wouldn’t let me activate a card with one.

You can activate a card by just going to the URL printed on the sticker attached to the card. No need to use any phone number.

[idontwantthis]

To the last point no you can’t.

I’m sure I could have figured it out eventually but once their proprietary id scanner rejected my passport I gave up and closed my account.

[0xDEADFED5]

i've been seeing more places rejecting VoIP numbers lately

[mindslight]

And if Google Voice doesn't work, there's also the "2FA Mule" technique: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251107 . It costs a few bucks a month so the original rant is still valid, but at least you don't have to deal with roaming, mucking with your actually-mobile device, or getting your location spilled.

[azalemeth]

You can't get Google Voice if you're not a US Google user