Is there a successful way to help elderly parents communicate with credit card companies?

Both of my parents are having trouble remembering to make payments on their credit cards as well as other issues where they could use my help. When I try to deal with the credit card companies myself, they are suspicious (rightly so, considering identity theft problems) and almost impossible to work with even when one of my parents is in the same room giving me any verification information needed.





They are not considering canceling the cards.





Has anyone helped their parents with their credit cards? What worked?|||Quite Frankly, become them.....I helped my mom a couple years ago.....she wrote down all the identifiers for me...mom's maiden name, soc, dob.....dog's name, favorite collar...etc...





I just pretended that I was her....had no problems and was able to get thorough clarification for her .....|||Make up a card with all of the basics on it (name, address, account) and the issue you want to work on. Add another sentence, "I give you permission to talk to my daughter."





This helps speed up the verification process--which can't be done by you because it's not your card--and then hand it off to you. Even having mom in the room isn't good enough, she needs to be on the phone!





You really need to arrange to have the bills sent to you and get signing authority on their account so you can pay the bills.|||I agree with the person above me. As long as you tell the person answering the phone you're the card member, they cannot accuse you of lying. I work for a credit card company, and as long as the caller passes verification and tells me they're the name on the card I could care less if they really are or not, my *** is covered for asking. People call in all the time and it's obvious they're not the person on the card, but we can't say anything about it. The other day some old guy called in pretending to be a 30 year old girl and the last notes on the account said that the card member's father would be calling back to discuss the account. He claimed to be the owner of the card from the beginning, passed all verification, so I had talk to him as if he was the card member. No one will call you on it, trust me.|||If they have enough money to automatically pay off the monthly credit card bills, you could set up automatic payments so that a payment won't be late again.