The Text & Web Freebie still continues for those who were already opted in to it, but there do seem to be occasional hickups over renewal, and my impression is that they may be more frequent in cases where the top-up occured while the Freebie was actually running. I do wonder each month whether my T&W Freebie will actually renew, but (touch wood) all OK so far. I had actually had a gap between Freebies, topped up on 3rd September, and it was only a matter of minutes before my "ready to go" text arrived.
I'm not aware of any reason why topping up from overseas should make any difference - provided the funds made their way to your account, they should "count" and I've topped up from both the US and from Aus just before returning home, to ensure that I had my Freebie available on my return. But I do wonder if there was some temporary glitch in the system mid-August, as both @saguaro and @Christinehicks topped up at around the same time.
I'd certainly recommend trying Live Chat, to get the Freebie activated - but do stress that it's the earlier version, that you know that other people are still having them renew without trouble, and that you want to continue with the T&W Freebie, not get transferred to Freebie Data. Recently appointed staff may simply not have come across the product before, but it should be somewhere in the dataset they have access to.
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