OT-ish: blocking sales calls on Virgin Landline

[Mentalguy2k8]

as before, (demented) Mother is plagued with these calls and I've had to hide her cheque book and anything else with her account numbers on, to stop her giving the details to these people. Registered with the TPS, etc etc.

If I arrange for her to have witheld-numbers blocked, this would help to some extent, but would it prevent her relatives in Australia from phoning her?

I've thought about changing her number but then I've got to rely on her to make a list of all the friends and relatives who phone her that we need to inform of her new number, which isn't realistic.

What's the definitive answer? I can't be there every day, all day and evening to "screen" the calls. I keep going to the bank and (Power Of Attorney) cancelling her direct debits to charities, but within 48 hours they've hassled her by phone again, and got her to reinstate them. I'd love to kick these people's teeth out. It seems every time I pop in, she's on the phone to one or other of these parasites.

[Martin Brown]

Unfortunately she is on a chugging mugs list. Why not give her some defective but plausibly authentic looking bank details so that the chuggers will feed bogus data into their direct debit system?

They will probably stop if the info they get is no good.

Enable itemised billing for a year and then act on that?

The best I can think of and it will only work on those that proffer a CLID is to take BTs "choose to refuse" service and systematically block them. It is a very double edged sword though - someone elderly or with dementia is just as likely to block your phone number by accident.

Not such a problem if you live nearby but tricky form a remote location.

[Huge]

Put her in a home.

[Jethro_uk]

[newshound]

I *really* like that idea. Wouldn't it be nice to give them Charles Saatchi's bank details.

I'm no longer in the same position, but perhaps I will need to suggest it to the kids one day!

[Lee]

We have anonymous caller reject with a Sky line, works the same as BT did when we had it on there (suppose it's the same on Virgin as well) callers who choose to have their Cli blocked by default can dial 1470 before making a call to temporarily pass Cli and 'get through'

What doesn't work is that often internal calls still get through with no Cli, it only blocks 'withheld' it doesn't always block 'unavailable'

We currently use a pair of nice Panasonic Dect phones which have a blacklist - calls added to the blacklist are simply ignored, they don't even ring ;) Can also be configured to only respond to calls on a whitelist although that in itself could obviously be problematic...

Similar-ish to the Truecall mentioned, which would be a better choice long term since it doesn't rely on the ACR service...

[Lee]

D'o'h obviously that was meant to say 'international' ;)

[Andrew Gabriel]

Does she have an internet connection, so you could use VoIP for the Australian calls?

[Tim+]

Um, I don't think the OP was kidding about the "demented" status of his mother. Whilst acknowledging that what skills are preserved in dementia can be very patchy, I still think that's a big ask.

Tim

[mike]

It's funny that our government and the Americans can intercept and trace ph one calls, texts, emails, in fact every fart that flies, between private ci tizens in their never-ending quest to protect us from terrorism but when it comes to tracking down one of their crooked businessman buddies pushing bo iler scrappage schemes from Manchester, dodgy solar panels from Wales or wh iplash compensation from Birmingham, the same ability to track down and sto p the white collar scumbags seems not to exist.

It's a shame because I'd really like to see some of those people being wate rboarded in Guantanamo Bay.

[John Rumm]

A standalone voip phone can be setup to look and behave just like a normal one. It can be phoned via its advertised number or via an IP address. So its the callers that would need re-education once its set-up.

[John Rumm]

Online banking (for you) perhaps.

Could you give instructions to the bank to not accept DD instructions until confirmed with you?

[dennis]

They may be scumbags but they are generally legal and there is no reason for anyone to track them down and do anything. They will attempt to track down illegal calls.

If you are being pestered by illegal calls you may be able to get the phone operator to intercept all calls and only forward the ones that pass the screening, I know BT used to do this in extreme cases.

[Lobster]

Martin Brown grunted in news:1Gjpu.743$ [e-mail]:

I sympathise as I have personal experience of similar stugg with M-I-L.

I don't think it blocks overseas calls, but can you not test this out for real? Eg, if it's not already done, block your own number to witheld numbers, and get the relevant Aussies to try phoning you? That said, I think chuggers and telesales outfits are wise to this and do usually present a number (of sorts) to display.

Can't help thinking that number changing is the only real solution for someone in her position.

I wonder if *somehow* it's possible to obtain such a list from BT retrospectively? After all, if Plod wanted that information, you get bet it would be available!

[Tim+]

It's certainly AN option but the Truecall device does work albeit a bit awkwardly if you wan't to maintain reception of certain overseas calls.

Other possible options might include putting all landline calls through an answer phone and provide a mobile phone for friends and family. This would depend on the person being able to operate a mobile phone though unless you get something like this.

Tim

[Tim+]

Didn't realise that. Cheers.

Tim

[tim......]

My friend had exactly the same problem as the OP and they tried this solution

She wouldn't stay there because every day she would wake up and think, "This isn't my house, why am I here" and then go wandering the streets trying to get "home"

Homes really can't cope with people who are this bad and the ones that can are really oppressive (in as nice a way as possible)!

tim

[tim......]

Even getting then to swap their landline for a mobile can be daunting. They don't "connect" when you pick them up and the demented don't have a clue what to do next

tim

[Andrew Gabriel]

Doesn't even need to be standalone.

I installed SPA-3000's and SPA-3102's around the extended family, spread across a few different countries. Effectively, the standard phone line passes through them, and an ethernet connection is used to reroute some of the calls to/from VoIP. All calls come through the same bog-standard telephone though, as far as the end-users are concerned. Even things like caller display work properly.

[John Rumm]

You can do similar tricks with VoIP capable routers like the Vigor

2830... they can be setup to link to normal phones and a normal phone line as well as the internet. You can then set a dial plan to choose which calls to send over what type of link. You just need to point them at a SIP provider to do the VoIP termination.