House phone-Post office query

AmyDean

Hello... this is a query about a house phone rather than a mobile. My 88 year old nana who has Alzheimers dials the number 47 on her phone repeatedly as she can hear someone telling her to do this for good luck, This is a hallucination due to her illness. She has received a phone bill of £225. The 30 page itemised bill shows the repeat phone calls to the number '47'. The post office is her supplier and they have told us that they wont cover this cost as she has dialled 0191 before the '47' plus they wont block this number so she cant ring it again. This is a LIE as she does not have the capacity to dial 0191 before hand and the number 474747474 is not a number so how on earth are they able to charge her for these 'phone calls' when all she hears is that the number does not exist. Any suggestions would be great as they are taking the money from her bank at the end of this month. Thanks

d123

AmyDean wrote: »

Hello... this is a query about a house phone rather than a mobile. My 88 year old nana who has Alzheimers dials the number 47 on her phone repeatedly as she can hear someone telling her to do this for good luck, This is a hallucination due to her illness. She has received a phone bill of £225. The 30 page itemised bill shows the repeat phone calls to the number '47'. The post office is her supplier and they have told us that they wont cover this cost as she has dialled 0191 before the '47' plus they wont block this number so she cant ring it again. This is a LIE as she does not have the capacity to dial 0191 before hand and the number 474747474 is not a number so how on earth are they able to charge her for these 'phone calls' when all she hears is that the number does not exist. Any suggestions would be great as they are taking the money from her bank at the end of this month. Thanks

You mention 0191 so I presume you are in that STD code.

0191-474 appears to be a valid prefix so it’s possible 0191-4747474 is a valid number, if you’re in the 0191 code area you don’t need to dial 0191 to dial out on a landline.

https://www.phonecall-info.co.uk/01914/74/

Edit:
I’ve just rang it and it’s answered by an answer phone...

mac.d

That's a good call by d123. Not sure how you can fix it, as disconnecting the phone isn't a reasonable solution for a vulnerable person. And unfortunately, I don't think there will be any way around not paying the bill that is due.

Possibly phone BT and ask if they could place a block on a particular number, and if so, switch to them? Or can they place a block on outgoing calls except to emergency numbers?

cookie365

Get her a phone that allows you to whitelist or blacklist numbers?



Put her on a tariff that includes unlimited calls to geographic numbers?

Farway

cookie365 wrote: »

Put her on a tariff that includes unlimited calls to geographic numbers?

That sounds like a very good idea

SnowTiger

Perhaps this would be a solution. It doesn't have a dialling pad, but has four big buttons that can be configured to call specific pre-programmed numbers.

Edit: just noticed it has a hidden keypad. You could glue the cover down over it.

d123

SnowTiger wrote: »

Perhaps this would be a solution. It doesn't have a dialling pad, but has four big buttons that can be configured to call specific pre-programmed numbers.

Edit: just noticed it has a hidden keypad. You could glue the cover down over it.

Or even just a few lumps of blu-tack to make it more difficult to remove and not tell the person it’s removeable.

mac.d

AmyDean wrote: »

Hello... this is a query about a house phone rather than a mobile. My 88 year old nana who has Alzheimers dials the number 47 on her phone repeatedly as she can hear someone telling her to do this for good luck, This is a hallucination due to her illness. She has received a phone bill of £225. The 30 page itemised bill shows the repeat phone calls to the number '47'. The post office is her supplier and they have told us that they wont cover this cost as she has dialled 0191 before the '47' plus they wont block this number so she cant ring it again.

Was just checking something else on BT and found that BT offer some outgoing call control options specifially targetted for issues like yours. One of the options is to give them up to 10 numbers that can be called from the line, and they'll block everything else (except emergency numbers).

BT: Outgoing call control – home phone