Malicious phone calls

[malwill54]

I have a relative that has personality/alcohol problems who when sober can be as nice as pie. However, when drunk the calls on our landine, are abusive, malicious and at all hours of the day and night. The calls result in us blocking our line by leaving it off the hook. Telephone Preference Service is no good as the calls are from an individual not a company. I have tried ringing 150 but to find the right department is a nightmare. Virgin's official line is to "choose option 4" however this does not work and the website  only offers "option 4".  Exactly which part of Customer Services deals with blocking numbers?  BT offer it as do others. There are apps for mobiles but Virgin offers no help at all at this time.

[goslow]

You need a phone with the feature to block individual numbers but that assumes the relative would always use the same number when calling.

A call screening device such as trueCall can screen numbers and can be set up to filter out unwanted calls

https://www.truecall.co.uk/category-s/116.htm

Some BT phones have a 'lite' version of trueCall built in but there have been a few issues reported for some using BT phones on VM lines.

Some phones have a 'Do not disturb' feature built in which will send calls to answering machine at specified times. This feature can be used in conjunction with a VIP caller setting (i.e. people in your phone contacts). The phone can be set up so that in a 'do not disturb period all callers go to answering machine but VIP callers are allowed to break through the 'do not disturb' screening

If you want to break contact with the relative entirely, VM will give you one free phone number change. This can be useful if you want to break contact with someone known to you.

The downside is you have to update all of your contacts of the number change. Also a 'new' number from VM will be recycled from a former VM customer and may bring with it its own history of unwanted calling problems.

[Beth_G]

Hi malwill54,

Welcome to the Community Forums, thank you for your post.

I'm sorry to hear you've been struggling to get some answers surrounding this. Everything that goslow has advised is correct - sadly, we do not offer a facility to block certain numbers from your landline phone.

But yes, whilst I appreciate it will be inconvenient, it may be a good idea to look at changing your number. If this is something you'd like to go through with, just let us know and we can get that arranged for you.

Kind regards