Blocking unwanted calls to vulnerable elderly relative

[Thisoldheartofmine]

She has landline and quite old BT phones. A set of 3.
Thinking of buying True call with the option of only allowing identified numbers through.
A system which works by an individual manually pushing buttons to block numbers wouldn't work.
Any experience?

We have BT phones with built in blocking - you save any numbers you want to let through, anyone else has to press 1 then leave a message and we never get any cold calls/ scams etc as it doesn't work with automated dialling systems

My sister in law has this but I'm not sure if this type of phone is still available.
I'll have a Google.
Would you know the model name ?

Call Guardian is a feature of your existing phones, and will not work with the new BT phones.18 Dec 2021
my relatives phones don't have this and I suspect they are no longer on sale

Try talking direct to BT's vulnerable persons section. They were really helpful for us.

Bt phone with call guardian, bought one last month from amazon

Model is BT 4600 £69.99 with two cordless handsets.

Thank you,! I don't know why, but I find this particular issue hard to crack.

Where I am calls from our local (large, teaching) hospital come through from an unknown number. I've managed to miss some, despite rarely needing contact with the hospital. Many older people have rather more medical appointments - possibly one to check first (not to mention her GP's surgery)

My mum only has a landline and old fashioned push button phone with BT. I set up online account which I access and use it to block numbers. It’s called call protect and is free. It works really well.

"you save any numbers you want to let through, anyone else has to press 1 then leave a message on it"
@WowIlikereallyhateyou does Call Guardian do this?

@Dibble135 our relative has too many scam callers too frequently , I'd have to be monitoring it every second.

Google TPS, telephone preference service. It didn’t take long for the calls to stop for us, and if they did get through I would threaten them with TPS, they shouldn’t be calling once registered. You can do this with landline and mobiles🤗

https://www.truecall.co.uk/category-s/117.htm

We use a TrueCall Secure for my grandmother who was getting almost constant scam calls, and was getting very distressed as she believed many of them

@Snippit she is on TPS and has been for some time .
I'm afraid it hasn't helped.
@ajanifear that true cal l looks the best , but it's a bit £££.
Though will soon save money , latest was insurance for the TV set and today was the same for the washing machine and a call about the switch off ( which is the BT change to digital I know) which I'm not sure was genuine.

For us it paid for itself very quickly in avoiding more charity donations / random insurances and also the time spent dealing with the bank trying to get money back

We’ve also had to get advise from True Call a couple of times and found them easy to deal with

I’m shocked, that’s so bad 😲🧐

I think I'll ring BT for advice, as suggested by@aramox1

I've used Truecall for my mum and that is working well.

@Snippit it's really unbelievable. I'd doubt it but I've witnessed it myself when visiting.
She must be on some kind of list which scammers have.

Age UK have good advice on this, worth ringing their helpline.

I despise scammwrs so much. Good luck.

My mum has a function on her phone, she's with Talk Talk. If it's an unknown number, you have to press 1 to accept. The problem is, she's got dementia and doesn't understand what the phone is asking her to do.

Please don’t do this. I’m a hospital doctor. It is a nightmare contacting people for urgent appointments and information when their phones block the unknown number call.

There is not always time to send a letter.

Some systems like true call allow a message to be left.
I've never understood why hospitals have to withhold their numbers.

Try getting in touch with your local trading standards department, a lot of them work in partnership with Truecall and can install a unit free of charge/at a heavily reduced cost. I work closely with our local department and they’re keen to get them installed because it reflects positively on them with councillors etc.

The Truecall units work as they block callers who are dialling en mass. They can be really effective even on their most basic setting and hospitals etc can still get through as the caller can press a number to get through. I believe there’s also a setting where the call can be diverted to a nominated caller who can “approve” the call.

We used Truecall to stop Mum being pestered by scam callers and giving them her bank details. She had dementia so wasn’t good with new technology and would not have been able to use a more basic system where she had to press a button.

Mum did not know we had installed it, we hid the unit under a cabinet and set it up while she was out. I had the app on my iPad and set it at the highest level. I went through her address book and input the numbers of all her family, friends, doctor, dentist, cleaners etc into a Trusted list. Only calls from these numbers were put through. Any with held numbers were blocked and all other calls that were valid got put through to a recorded message of me telling them that mum only accepted calls from family and friends and that anyone else who wished to speak to her had to contact me first - I gave my mobile number. The instruction book from Truecall was very clear on how to set up the system.

I could log in and check her call log to see the numbers of any rejected calls just in case I had forgotten to add someone to the Trusted list. I could also see all her call records, who called her, who she called, number of with held numbers etc. i think we paid a small monthly fee to access this. It was a brilliant system and well worth the money to keep mum safe - no need for her to have six insurance policies for a Sky dish that she did not have!

In the three years it was in place, I only had one caller who phoned me after listening to my message and they had no issue nor were offended by my intervention.