Advice regarding T-mobile payg - recent changes

nappy501

Hi,

I have been supporting a woman in her 60's since December last year. She uses her mobile phone just to make calls, she does not text. When she has been with me these calls are always very short. She has a payg mobile phone (quite basic) on the T-mobile network. She goes to the post office and tops up her phone via a top up card by about £10 every week.

Over the past couple of weeks she has complained of having to top up her mobile phone a lot, the week before last she said it was £30 and last week £15. Yesterday when I went to the post office with her, she topped up by £10 and today when she checked she had just over £6 left.

Today I checked her call log and since yesterday she has made approximately 18 call, 3 calls to 150. The other calls are of less than a minute, I think 2 or 3 were over a minute.

She is also complaining of a lot of texts coming from friends and she doesn't want them. Unfortunately, a neighbour deleted her texts this morning, so I was unable to see if any were spam.

She wondered if someone was hacking into her card and using her mobile, I explained that I didn't think that was possible. She also wondered if her phone was dialling in her pocket. I have noticed that her phone auto locks very quickly, so I don't think so.

I don't know if there have been any recent changes to T-mobile pricing, but it appear to me that they charge 30p per minute. I presume that covers part of a minute so if her call lasts 30 seconds, it still costs her 30p?

Unfortunately, this woman has health issues and suffers some memory loss, so is not able to manage change well.

I am a low mobile phone user, so I am not up on what would be best. Payg T-mobile customers who just want to make telephone calls, don't look to get a good deal. I wonder if text to 441 'weekend credit' or 'smart 10' would help. I thought smart 10 would be a waste of time as she does not use text or data, but later I noticed that you get 100 minutes, so she would then be paying 10p per minute.

The idea of using the same network appeals, but who would take responsibility of texting for her every week?

I presume the other option is Giffgaff, then she would need a new phone, which I think she can manage. I just wonder if you can top up with a top up card, as she would not be able to manage a voucher and does not use the internet.

I think she pays a lot of money and doesn't get much for it, if anyone has any ideas of a network that would be cheaper and suits her needs that would be great. Thank you.