Dementia and calls to 118500

cavyslave

I am at my wit's end here. My 92 year old brother-in-law has dementia and lives at home with carers coming in several times per day. He has taken to calling BT 118500 and has run up bills into the £100's which he is finding difficult to pay. because of his dementia he is denying making these calls, but he is definitely making them and I even found a piece of paper in his house yesterday with 118500 written on it in his handwriting. He says he hasn't made any calls to that number but his records show otherwise (he lives alone and there is no way his carers would be making calls to that number in the middle of the night) On one occasion he amassed £89 in call charges within an hour or so. I called BT and they said to purchase 'call barring' which I duly did, only to discover that it doesn't work for these type of calls.

I'm now back on hold to BT (been on hold for 20mins) trying to find out if there is a way to stop him making these calls because otherwise he's going to be cut off for not being able to pay his bills!

cavyslave

I have managed to get through and have been told there is no way to prevent calls to this number!!!

JJ_Egan

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2551432/Callers-BTs-118-500-directory-enquiries-claim-refund.html


You require a handset that can be programmed to block certain outgoing calls .

tomtontom

https://www.truecall.co.uk/care/careoutgoingcalls.aspx

cavyslave

Thank you for all your help. I called the Alzheimer's society and they recommended this. It may be of some help to carers of those with dementia or similar health issues who are experience similar problems with their loved ones.

http://btplc.com/Inclusion/ProductsAndServices/ServicesfromBT/Callcontrol/index.htm

bod1467

Linked from that page:

http://btplc.com/Inclusion/ProductsAndServices/Choosetherightphone/BT8500AdvancedCallBlocker/index.htm

We bought the dual-handset version of this yesterday. (More for the incoming call block functionality, but it also allows outgoing call blocks too - and does so at a handset level rather than a network level).

JJ_Egan

Yes brilliant phone blocks 99% of my spam calls .Could not find how to block outgoing calls until i just read the link .

cavyslave

Great news. Got through to Natalie at BT who has sorted everything out for me. She has blocked calls to 118, 123 and 100 numbers and he can now call 10 nominated numbers only so no chance of any more expensive calls to premium rate numbers. This is obviously something they don't pubicise and I really had to do some digging to get them to admit that there actually IS a way to block calls to those kind of numbers. So anyone with an ageing relative suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's, or someone with mental health issues (she told me a lot of people with OCD continuously call the talking clock for instance!) you must persevere because they can block those numbers from being dialled, they just don't want to.....

AJXX

cavyslave wrote: »

Great news. Got through to Natalie at BT who has sorted everything out for me. She has blocked calls to 118, 123 and 100 numbers and he can now call 10 nominated numbers only so no chance of any more expensive calls to premium rate numbers. This is obviously something they don't pubicise and I really had to do some digging to get them to admit that there actually IS a way to block calls to those kind of numbers. So anyone with an ageing relative suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's, or someone with mental health issues (she told me a lot of people with OCD continuously call the talking clock for instance!) you must persevere because they can block those numbers from being dialled, they just don't want to.....

Having worked in a BT call center before I can tell you with certainty that it isn't that they don't want to. It'll be that they don't know how to, looks like you got through to a good one who knew what she was doing.

robatwork

Can I just ask how "Natalie from BT" knew you were genuine and that your brother-in-law had dementia? Did you just convince her of that over the phone or was any other proof required?

eyelinerprincess

I don't believe that it was a matter of "convincing" the BT operator. People may want to block these numbers for various reasons.