RE: You have to laugh21 Feb 2021 21:45
Don't know why but just tested that behind a pay wall news item bellow and it revealed the whole article. So quickly copy pasted it., and here it is for anyone interested
(It target's BT because they have 70% of the countries elderly land-line only population) :
" A volunteer campaiger is on a crusade to help elderly customers who are sold expensive broadband and telephone services by BT, Britain’s largest provider.
Kaye Just, a project manager from New Zealand who has relocated to London, pores over the BT bills of elderly customers and tries to find them better deals.
“It’s a full-time job trying to work out how some of the elderly people I help end up on expensive services they hardly ever use,” she said.
Just volunteers for the charity Age UK in west London. Derec Craig, the chief executive of Age UK Hammersmith and Fulham, said: “While I understand that BT and companies like that are commercial enterprises, they should have a duty of care to ensure that older people are not being locked into long contracts and possibly being exploited.”
One of Just’s clients is Christina Philbin, who is 89 and has hearing and sight problems. She receives pension credit, a state benefit, but was paying up to £70 a month for a landline and broadband service. She was confused by her high charges and asked for help.
When Just contacted BT on Christina’s behalf, BT said it could lower her monthly bills to £26.99. In November Christina applied for BT Basic, a low-cost telephone service for people on specific means-tested benefits. It costs £5.16 a month and includes free weekend calls. A broadband service can be added for £10.07 month.
Christina sent proof of her financial circumstances but her application was rejected. BT said it had contacted the department for Work and Pensions and could not verify her as a recipient of pension credit. The letter said that if Christina’s circumstances changed and she wanted to reapply for BT Basic, “we’re unable to process another application within six months of the original application”.
Just has offered her help to Christina and others because, when trying to help her mother to cut her bills during a visit to New Zealand a few years ago, she found that she had been paying for an expensive satellite TV service that she did not use.
When Just contacted the company it agreed to list her mother, who had dementia, as vulnerable and to stop taking payments. On a return visit 18 months later, Just found that her mother had been put on a new contract with the same company.
“I only managed to get her out of it by emailing New Zealand’s version of Watchdog. I was incensed and it stayed with me, so I contacted Age UK
Sid Pea****, 50, got in touch to complain about how his mother, Margaret, 87, was treated by BT. He thought her £60 a month bill for phone and broadband was excessive given that she only used email and made the occasional family video call from her home in Bangor, Co Down. The bill is a
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