I have a family member who is running up huge phone bills by dialling 0905, 0906 etc premium rate numbers to enter competitions that they cannot win. £274 last quarter and the majority were to these numbers. Some where £13 each. There really should be a law against these scalpers but as there isn't I need to get them blocked.

Any advice appreciated.

If you are on BT there is a code you can tap into the phone to bar Premium rate calls made on your phone. The details are in this document.

http://btsupport.custhelp.com/app/an...d/13703/c/1818

Not sure if this works "out of the box" or if you need to sign up to the appropriate service first. But looks like it can be done.

Of course the problem is if you can enter a code to bar the numbers a code can also be entered to un-bar them. And if you are not on BT these codes probably won't work anyway.

I think that BT offers (or did at one time) a free permanent block on 09 numbers.

As this was not a user-controllable block there were no codes to disable it. Worth checking if it still exists!

That doc. I linked to was about the only thing I could find on Call Barring.

There was however a mention of adding a Call Barring package to your service but no real detail about what that entailed.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.co...?topicId=25504

See here - in the "Protect your phone line" section

http://www2.bt.com/static/i/btretail...equipment.html

Exactly as I thought!

On residential phone lines BT can bar, for free, UK-based 0900-0909 premium rate numbers. But it will NOT bar international numbers. Call 150 for details.