Elderly Parents and subscription services

bloodline76

bloodline76

bloodline76

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Joined
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My Dad is 80 this year, he lives the other side of the country and its difficult doing things for him. He recently called up BT and asked if he could get the darts on his Sky, he cancelled a while back as it was too much for him.

His situation is that he has cancer and dementia (Early signs), and literally started the conversation telling them about his problems. And I found out that they have put him on a £114 per month package. He has been with them since 2016, so its not any extension of his current deal. This also includes having a phone line and paying for his calls.

Its a difficult discussion to have trying to convince him or explain to him that he can go to other providers for probably have the cost but its stressing him out.

Has anyone experienced a similar thing with their parents/grand parents?

He has 14 days cooling off, going to try contacting BT, but appreciate any advice if someone has been through the same.
 
Yes, I have been there. Literally had to be on the call to BT with my mother. Also tried to get her a cheap mobile contract but she refuses to use card details on a website. I sent her to the shop but the good deals are online only. So they sold her a more expensive one... and she loses £200 or so over two years. It is hard.
 
its a bit of hassle but i wonder if you could not get them to put the bills in your name and you sort it all for him/her? It will be a bit of hassle initially transferring over but probably worth it.

that way you make sure they are getting a fair deal for the products they need and not a load of un needed guff and it removes any stress from them.

I sort out my parents amazon and netflix...... and used to do their apple as well but realised it was not getting used so closed that one down recently.

it does depend on the people involved however, i imagine it must be unsettling accepting you are at a point in your life where you are no longer as in control as you once were.

i now have power of attorney on my parents health and wealth. not something i want to have but it is probably necessary.
 
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bloodline76 said:
His situation is that he has cancer and dementia (Early signs), and literally started the conversation telling them about his problems. And I found out that they have put him on a £114 per month package.
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utter scumbags - not that it would do any good but i'd report them to ofcom. i'd make as much noise as humanly possible on social media too about what they did.
 
should be law that all subscriptions can be cancelled without a phone call and contracts should be limited to 1 month max...

if they want people long term they should give discounts or perks for retension.

lets have real capitalism where they compete for subscribers
 
My mum changed her mobile contract recently, for the first time in decades, which didn't really work out so she cancelled the transfer and went back to EE.

This then brought to light to me that she had been paying for a sim card for her iPad (that she got from EE) for the last 6 years because she "needed the internet" on it. She didn't realise that the WiFi at home did that, and she never takes the iPad out of the house!

Even when she was coming back to them and resigning up, she queried the need for the two numbers (1 for phone 1 for iPad) but she's hard of hearing, which she told them, and couldn't understand what was being said. In the end, after getting stressed by the long call, she said words to the effect of "I don't understand what you are saying, but I'm going to have to say yes to complete this call"

I was pretty mad and complained to EE about what I thought was a shoddy practice by the sales person and that she had been paying for this sim for years when they could see it had never been used (I found it still in the iPad original packaging).

They offered £20 compensation.... :rolleyes:

Then after even my Mum scoffed at that, they offered £50 :rolleyes:

I refused that and escalated the complaint, saying I'd go to the ombudsman etc, put in a SAR for renewal telephone call etc. We then got someone higher up the food chain who immediately said they could see the sim had never been used, cancelled the current sim and refunded the entire 6 years of previous subs.

Shocking sales practice in the first place imo, but at least we got the decent result in the end.
 
It is all totally wrong but people on little money working for commission are going to sell stuff.
The system is carp.
 
bigmike20vt said:
its a bit of hassle but i wonder if you could not get them to put the bills in your name and you sort it all for him/her? It will be a bit of hassle initially transferring over but probably worth it.

that way you make sure they are getting a fair deal for the products they need and not a load of un needed guff and it removes any stress from them.

I sort out my parents amazon and netflix...... and used to do their apple as well but realised it was not getting used so closed that one down recently.

it does depend on the people involved however, i imagine it must be unsettling accepting you are at a point in your life where you are no longer as in control as you once were.

i now have power of attorney on my parents health and wealth. not something i want to have but it is probably necessary.
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Yes, I have considered this.

Power of attorney would be probably the best, but I would have those issues that you mention. I am not a single child, so there is already a sign of people arguing over inheritance, and there is the problem that with dementia my Dad doesnt understand that as a problem and being a strong character would reluctantly accept that is a problem.
 
Hagar said:
It is all totally wrong but people on little money working for commission are going to sell stuff.
The system is carp.
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I have been there in the past but no matter how bad my situation is, if an 80 year old man calls up and wants to watch the darts and goes into telling me about his cancer, I am not going to sell him everything under the sun that he doesnt need.
 
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Same job with my mother. Prefers the Sky remote and being able to talk to it and paying £80 a month for the privilege. The package should be over £100 and it does my head in because it’s me renegotiating the contract every 18 months to get it at “the right money”.

I’d get her on the IPTV, but she’s not having any of it. :confused:
 
Been there, had to sit on the call to negotiate/cancel. I suspect you’ll need to do the same.

Sky/Virgin, I can’t wrap my head around why they’re still such major players, getting away with those package prices in this age.
 
bloodline76 said:
He has 14 days cooling off, going to try contacting BT, but appreciate any advice if someone has been through the same.
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have you been on a three-way call with BT for father to authorize you/your# so you can speak for him - did this with my parents after they had had multiple
failed fibre installs, not through their fault, and BT kept modifying deal/increasing the price.
 
bloodline76 said:
His situation is that he has cancer and dementia (Early signs), and literally started the conversation telling them about his problems. And I found out that they have put him on a £114 per month package.
Click to expand...

Ofcom requires that they take vulnerability into account so even if outside the 14 day period they'd potentially be in trouble if you wanted to kick up a fuss about this - there's no specific age criteria saying they can't sell to an 80 year old but the fact that he's let them know about those health problems etc. at the start of the call ought to have meant they'd be careful here. I'd be tempted to not only cancel the deal but also register a complaint.
 
Looking out for good deals on services seems more important than ever, in this time of businesses trying to make up for lost profits in early covid.

Our NowTV landline broadband and unlimited sub 60min landline calls package would cost us at least ~£800 until summer '28.

Instead, we've just bought a 5g SIM router and a SIM card with 500GB per month that cost ~£270 over same period! :eek:
 
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My mums in her 80s now, living on her own and she sorts out her energy renewal and ISA savings etc but recently had to step in when her BT account came up for renewal. BT were quite happy to keep charging her for basic broadband and not upgrade the home router which was quite old. She wanted to stay on her copper BT broadband and not go fibre so I got a deal a bit cheaper and the latest wifi6 hub.

Apart from that shes fully compos mentis but would consider getting power of attorney when the time comes.
 
Partners parents are an absolute nightmare but its mostly down to her mum who just doesn't understand and never asks us for advice.

They pay EE £120 for phone and broadband, absolutely no need for it pay for a 1 gig line when only 2 people are using the internet! Add to that the amount of extenders they keep getting sent (which they also pay for), phone keeps losing connection to the hub which is always fixed by resetting the adaptor thing, yet they always call up EE who claim its down to poor signal and send out another extender, its a 3 bedroom house there is nothing to extend as everything has full wi-fi signal already. At one point they had an extender in the same room as the router as that's what the guy on the phone advised them to do.

They were paying O2 £26 a month for a SIM with 3GB of data a month! and paying for phone on top of that! Total bill for the phone was £48 and this was some mid range Samsung phone

Bought a "new" laptop 2 months ago, didn't ask for advice until it kept coming up with update to Windows 11 popups. Their "new" laptop isn't Windows 11 compliant

I dread to think how much they are paying for Sky but they have Movies and Sport despite not watching either of them, Sky Alibi is on 24/7.

The problem is they never sign up for anything online, its always ringing the company up because if you speak to them on the phone you get a better deal :rolleyes:
 
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