MrAdamW’s parents are now old and frail. His father has Alzheimer’s and his mother finds it difficult getting about.

At my house, however, we seem to have a never-ending series of calls for PFI, insurance, home improvements etc. And we’re registered with the TPS. As a result we tend to screen our calls.

I want to be more pro-active and block all the crap so we pick-up more, in case the in-laws need us.

Does anyone have a true-call or call-saint thing? Do they work? Can they recommend?

Ta!

Just need to be sure they don’t cut out calls from likes of hospitals, surgery, library and so on that often have no caller ID info either – which is why we merely screen rather than block the annoying ones – and some of those do have real numbers..

Going not listed and TPS may help a bit but as you’ve found, not a guarantee!

I bought this BT 8500 Digital Telephone and Answering Machine with Advanced Call Blocker, Twin DECT
as my wife has MS and has slight cognitive decline so would happily talk to the sharks who phone 🙁

It works really well IMO

The good thing is the hospital etc can say their name and the phone will ring but you have to accept the announced call, we haven’t found any of the gobshites that try to sell you stuff will bother

Bought the BT phone above for inlaws. It’s been great, they’ve had zero cold calls since using it. You can also add numbers to your VIP list and they get straight through.

It won’t help the parents or automated calls, but my latest tactic has been having a positive effect in reducing calls

I used to get wound up but now I’m all cheery and just tell them that I don’t answer questions from cold callers. They all try and tell me they aren’t selling and proceed to ask me a question after which I politely tell them that I don’t answer questions. This always ends up with them hanging up feeling hacked off and I’m in a good mood.

Parents have one. Took a little setting up but now not a single cold call. It acts like a secretary to numbers it doesn’t recognise, takes a name and puts them on hold, until parents decide to talk or not. Once accepted they can decide whether to add to accepted numbers or not.

These sound really good, I will get my parents one I think. Sorry for the hijack but cheers to those who have answered very helpful

I’ve just unplugged the house phone.

Report every call to the ICO as they do seem to take action against companies:

http://www.ico.org.uk

I just let everything go to answerphone although interested in that BT phone recommended by MrOvershoot. I wouldn’t, however, give BT a penny of my money!