Charged for international call when using country code for Australia

[#1]

I'm not from Australia but I visit at least once a year, and I have several contacts on my phone for people here that are saved with the country code because that's how I would usually dial their numbers. 

I hadn't had any problems with this until two days ago, when I got charged 1.17 per minute for calls to my friends. 

Customer Support tells me I need to save my contacts in a local format, i.e. 04xxx as opposed to +614xxx but it makes no sense to have to do this every time I come here. 

Does anyone know if this is actually a thing or did I get bamboozled? 

[#2]

I call Bamboozled! I have all my contacts with +61.

Sadly I don't have any answers why your Optus sim while being local (AU) is being charge an odd rate.. Are you able to supply the type of recharge you applied?

[#3]

Thanks for the validation, Dave  

I'm using the Daily Prepaid Maximizer, the one that costs $2 a day for 500mb + unlimited local calls and texts. 

I recall having done the same thing last year using a different plan ($30 for 3GB with validity for 30 days) and not getting random charges. 

Hence my confusion about the whole deal. Glad to know I'm not going nuts. 

[#4]

I'll shout out to a Optus team member and see if they can share some insight.

[#5]

Hi @Strifemare, apologies for the inconvenience caused. Could you please PM me here → http://yesopt.us/pmaman me your full name, Optus number & date of birth so we can take a look into this?