Mary Knight has a phone in her room in the Sechelt, B.C., group home she lives in, but no computer or internet. Mary recently got a call from Telus and ended up with a wireless modem.

Her friend Glen McClughan is the executive director of the Sunshine Coast Association for Community Living. He felt Mary had been imposed upon.

"They asked me on the phone," Mary said.

Another man that McClughan works with, Ron Paul, got a call from Bell Mobility and ended up with a Solo cell phone he didn't need and couldn't afford.

"I had to pay a lot of money on it," Ron said.

Ron and Mary couldn't get any customer service people to understand why their contracts should be cancelled. And when McClughan contacted the companies but was told he couldn't intervene.

"I was told only the party themselves could initiate that call and have the service reversed," he said.

It was a catch-22 that hardly seemed right, so McClughan contacted CTV News.

First we went to see Telus. Spokesman Shawn Hall says it was a simple misunderstanding.

"In this particular case, we let them out of the contracts, no problem, and put them on our do-not-call-registry," he said.

And after we contacted Bell, it is doing the same thing.

Telus had some suggestions for those who care for someone with a developmental disability or cognitive impairment:

• Change the name on the bill to your name so the service cannot be changed and nothing sold to them without your permission .

• Or get the name on the phone company's " do-not-call-list"

• Or put the bill in the name of the care facility.

"It doesn't cost anything to be on our do-not-call registry, it doesn't cost anything to change who's on the bill," said Hall.

McClughan says he'll remain vigilant.

"There was no malicious intent in any of this. I recognize that," he said. "It was just the aggressiveness of the marketing and the lack of understanding on the other end of the phone. And that was the issue for me."

He believes the phone companies should make it easier for caregivers to intervene.

If someone does not have the capacity to form a contract, the contract is void. Companies have to reverse the contract. They know this. And it's not just phone companies. It's all companies.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Chris Olsen