Confirmation needed - few calls but mainly daytime

infj

Hi,

Although a moneysaver for about 3 years the 1 thing I have never done is look at our phone supplier. I want to stay with BT for broadband and rental (I know it's expensive). As I work fulltime and am not much of a phone user (prefer Net) my calls are practically nothing. However my mother lives with me and she uses the phone much more and often during the day (local calls mainly).

I am thinking that the way to drive down the call costs to nothing is to buy an Orchid dialler and programme it with 18185. My mother would then be able to use the phone as normal and she would not notice any change at all.

Anyone else tried this? any catches or advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks
Sarah

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Heinz

I have done exactly that for my elderly mother (although she was on the ball enough to be using 1899 and 18185 'manually' before I installed the V4+).

Bearing in mind you can get a number of 'all 01/02/03 calls" packagaes for about £5/month though, a quick calculation might be in order first. Do you (she) make 100 weekday daytime calls each month (i.e. £5 worth via 18185)?

infj

Heinz,

a very quick calculation reveals an average of 67 daytime calls per month for the last 6 months.

She might start calling more though if I tell her it's free!! But I can always recalculate if that happens. And at least then we'll be getting some value out of the BT rental cost.

Thanks

Sarah

infj

Oh dear - just realized I've missed something - this phones business is complicated.
Will 18185 charge 5p per call all the time? BT has free calls at the weekend now and we'd lose that with the dialler. I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible for my mother as her eyesight is not brilliant.

Sarah

Heinz

infj wrote: »

Will 18185 charge 5p per call all the time? BT has free calls at the weekend now and we'd lose that with the dialler.

Yes, 18185's 01/02/03 calls are 5p each at all times.

Hence the Orchid time/day programming!

My mother has wet ARMD so, although she lives 50 miles away, I maintain her Orchid program and have just programmed a memory button on her phone so she can easily force it to call home when necessary,

infj

I am starting to get my head around this now - I didn't realise the dialler could be so comprehensively programmed!

This site proves the power of helpful people on the Net (and Martin!) - I could never have found out this stuff without it.