Hospital charges

[ash316]

I am absolutely sickened to discover I have been charged over £70 during the last few days for calls to my wife's mother who is in hospital. My wife is absolutely distraught. We knew it would be 13p plus network charges but thought that her inclusive minutes would include that. It's actually 67p a minute. How do EE justify such an excessive rate at such a time when patients aren't allowed visitors?

I rang EE earlier and they have applied a £30 credit but it does not help us going forward because we cannot afford to keep phoning. My wife's mother has her own EE phone but she cannot use it as there is no signal, which just adds insult to injury.

I'm really disappointed with EE and I definitely don't expect to remain with them once our contracts are up.

[bristolian]

Hello @ash316 

Welcome to the EE community

What were the first 5 digits of the number you called? It sounds, from your reference to "13p plus network charges" that this was an 084, 087 or potentially 070 number. Your inclusive minute allowance would only cover calls to landlines (numbers beginning 01, 02, 03) & UK-mobiles.

Is there WiFi-coverage at the hospital?

[ash316]

Yes it is an 087 number. I've since been made aware that it's 13p + 67p a minute.

I don't know if there is wifi but my mother in law's phone is not a smart phone and even if we provide her with one she wouldn't know how to use it.

It wouldn't be so bad if she could get a signal on her phone or if we were allowed to visit but neither of those are possible.

[bristolian]

You have my sympathies, many of these hospital phone systems do use expensive number ranges for commercial motivations and the current situation can sometimes only make this worse.

It won't help now, but for future reference there is some background info on non-geographic call charges on this EE help page 

Earlier during the pandemic, EE did have an automatic refund scheme for call charges to particular hospital phones, but I believe this has now ended.