My mother is the biggest sucker around, she will donate to anyone who calls and anyone who sends her something. I am primarily dealing with this via having her give me the donation forms and I will send them in if they are not a scam. Just this month I see two phone call solicitations. I am going to dispute the charges, does anyone know, does she have the legal ability to protest the charge and have it refunded?
I just want to get an idea as to the allowed behavior of the charity. Can they refuse to refund successfully?
My next step is to figure out what to do about her, she has no dementia, but she has a lack of executive function. I don’t want to take her credit card away, but I may have to if she won’t agree to no phone donations.
Our family policy is that we don’t donate to anyone who calls us on the phone. They have to mail a letter. So perhaps you can put a note by her phone for her to refer to when she gets these calls. She can just read the “thanks for the call but I need this information in writing” script to them, and then she can hang up the phone. If they called her, they already have her street address as well because all of that information is linked in their databases.
When I discovered my dad wasn’t paying bills, though he was writing everything in his check book, with numbers, but he had run out of actual checks, I quietly took over. We went to bank where he knew the people, and opened an account with both our names on it. I called all the utility companies to pay past due bills, and have future bills sent to me. Same with credit cards. All but AMEX threw out the late charges. Months later, I had to call Funds, like Janus and Vanguard, as I needed money to support him on a monthly basis.
I cannot imagine what I would have done with phone call solicitations. Well, I put my dad’s card ( for gas, groceries) online, so I would have set up a daily alert when it was used. Nowadays, any charge I make shows up instantaneously on my phone. If your mom’s credit card was linked to your phone, you would see the charges.
Can you get your email listed on her card for spending alerts? I do this with my Target Visa just to protect myself from someone getting ahold of my number. I set the dollar amount at $100 and get email alerts if I go over.