Premium Rate Barring - what does the caller hear?

[BarkingMadBarking]

My m-in-law is having trouble remembering and spends a lot of time calling a friend from her landline. She has an unlimited calling plan so it hasn't been an unlimited cost issue. However, the person is now in hospital and there is a 0872xxxxx number provided by Hospedia but the service + access charges are 35.84p/min. We could be looking at some big bills.

I spoke to BT after finding this page: Managing calls from a home phone | Here For You | BT Help 

BT said the Premium rate bar would cover the 0872 numbers but the agent couldn't tell me what the experience for the caller would be when they tried to call the number. 

Would the caller receive an announcement to say calls are barred or do they receive some kind of number unobtainable tone? 

Does anyone know? 

Thank you.

[NeilO · Accepted solution]

Hi @BarkingMadBarking welcome back to the community. Some 0870 numbers are classed as premium rate so ordering and setting up the call-barring feature for your mother-in-law may help.

When a barred number is called the following announcement is made "Calls to premium rate information services are barred".

Thanks

Neil

[BarkingMadBarking]

@NeilO 

Thanks for you reply.

The feature you linked is approx £6 per month. From what I can see, it would give flexibility to enable/disable barring during the month. When I spoke with BT this morning, I could have a PRS bar added, for free, which could be changed once a month. Pros and cons.

I was hoping the bar may produce a number unobtainable tone. The announcement will generate questions as to why it is barred. Last months bill had 1976 mins of calls - mainly to a single number. At 35p/min it would be £691!! Ouch!

Thanks again.