Mom has Alzheimer's. Can an alert be put on her phone, tv, etc accounts so they don't make changes when she calls?

I just finished contacting all of the non-profits that constantly solicit my mother for money, AARP, Red Cross, Cancer Society, Lung Society, Veterans, the list goes on and on. I found that they didn’t respond to a written request to stop soliciting Mom, and they didn’t respond to an e-mail, but they DID respond when I went on Twitter and chastised them there (i.e., “she is 97 years old and has dementia and you are preying on her by asking for money every X number of weeks, money that she does not have!”) I appears that they don’t like being called out on a forum where thousands of people might see!

Great advice! You could also have an access code put on all the accounts. Like a pin number. Whoever doesn't know the code can not have access to the account and can not make any changes. People do this when thier kids try to change or add channels to their cable accounts. Good luck.

I agree with chdottir, change the billing address and the phone number to yours.

Thank you! I changed the billing address but not phone number. I’ll do that; so that will take care of them calling ... now just fingers crossed she won’t call them.

You might try, but I think it would be "iffy" as to whether there would be consistent follow through on their end. Especially since a lot of it is "marketing" stuff, and the people who do that often aren't real particular about detail, as long as they make a sale.

Do the bills come to her, and is that a trigger for her to make these changes? The contact info for all my mother's accounts is my phone number and address, so she never sees any bills or such.

Or maybe she is, and ignores them. She wouldn't be able to figure out how to do any of these things, so I don't have that worry.

As others have said, get poa asap as this will only get worse. Easier to get poa while she is still deemed competent. Good idea to set a pin on the account as I found my parents can not remember pins or passwords so they can not access accounts that require them. Also, either take away her credit card or set alerts on it so every time she charges something you can get an alert on your phone. I got a charge card for myself under my parents account and set up all auto pays under my card. Good luck.

I’m concerned as to why you don’t have POA if you are ha doing her bills. Who does have POA?
I am my dad's and all bills come to my address or email. He sees nothing. If no one has POA yet...you are going to have trouble.

I had to make many calls to undo things Mom did... Awful and a huge time-waster for me. Plus not knowing if 5 mins later she would undo what I'd just undone and I'd have to start over! My best advice is that when you're talking to these people about stopping the calls, use this wording with them: "I'm giving you the chance to explain why you are clearly attemtping to take advantage of a stroke patient. Do not call her and do not deal with anyone other than her POA." Trust me, they were falling all over themselves trying to fix it. One they realized the person has an advocate, suddenly it was all good and it seemed to hold up just as well if she called them as opposed to them calling her. The number of issues in general seemed to drop. I would also tell them she's got no money to buy or pay for anything. The other thing I did (as time allowed) was to call the companies who solicited her by mail and ask them to stop sending stuff. We now believe that she may have been mistaking charity solicitations for actual bills and was paying them... Cutting down on the mail helped a lot and may have indirectly cut down on the solicitation phone calls also.

Pepsee has great advice - put a "child" lock on whatever you can.

chdottir's advice about address and phone changes is also easily done. Glad to hear you are already doing that.

I went further and cut off my Dad's charge card. He didn't need one and everyone then had to go through me if they wanted to be paid. Easy peasy.

I would think an Elder Attorney could help you with this.

Get guardianship then you can do these things - you'll need it eventually unless she has made out a P.O.A.