To incensed at the length of time organisations keep us waiting before answering the phone or replying on line

[Tremblingmadness]

Having spent four hours waiting to speak to HMRC today I am tearing my hair out.

I have an urgent payment query caused by an issue in their system. I attempted to resolve it with their AI offering, but the bot couldn’t understand.

There have followed three phone calls, all cut off at about the 1 hour stage. I am currently on the fourth.

Why, why, why? Just why?

My issue won’t go away, it has to be answered, so why do they believe it will help the situation by making me waste a large part of the day listening to them telling me how important my call is, while playing me the most irritating jingle.

Last week it was my Insurance Company, two weeks ago the AA.

I just don’t get what the point is. These organisations have to respond eventually, their AI is not fit for purpose, so why not resource sufficiently to do so in a timely manner.

AIBU to want someone to answer the phone within a few rings and what is the point of keeping us all sitting in a queue and having to ring back numerous times to get a resolution.

Yes, it is really annoying that so many companies refuse to provide an email address or even a contact form (which they are actually required to do by consumer regulations, I have no idea why it's not being enforced).

@FrangipaniBlue

My Tax return was submitted last June (23).

January 24 is the date when my payment is due.

I do all my SA submission / payments on line and normally need no help to do so.

For some reason best known to themselves HMRC decided to partially allocate yesterday’s payment to a previous Tax Year, leaving that year overpaid and my 2022-23 payment outstanding. Unless resolved that would have incurred interest charges.

Apparently I am not alone with the issue. They don't know why it is happening but needs manual intervention to resolve.

SO not option but to try to phone and speak to them !!

I did once phone a company and they literally just picked up the phone. No IVR or anything. I nearly fell off my chair. I think it might have been someone like Ecotricity. Must have been a decade ago now though!

Until recently Plusnet were very good. There was an IVR but once you'd pressed your button they answered very quickly. You could also contact them via your account online and they emailed or called you back. Not sure if that is still the case as I haven't had cause to phone them for a while.

Virgin Media on the other hand are awful if you need to contact them about a problem.

Zen (internet) pick the phone up within a minute and bingo! you are talking to a real person based in Rochdale. I have been through all the big firms over the years and left each one specifically because of the completely crap customer service lines - the worst were BT and Sky. It will take a lot for me to move from Zen because of this.

What irritates me most is that these organisations are knowingly creating customer frustration without trying to find solutions.

Most people are intelligent enough to have tried to answer their own queries before picking up the phone to speak to someone. So the majority of those calls are not going to just go away (I do understand that some will)

Hence, by just leaving customers hanging on the phone, listening to inane messages, for hours will mean that many are irritated at the stage that their call is eventually answered.

So where are the solutions? These organisations know their call volumes, they probably have them tracked by the minute. Why not show the average wait times according to the time of day, on their website? Why not adjust their staffing volumes in line with those wait times? Why not offer call back?

I don’t mind waiting to get an answer to my question and will happily adjust my call time to match their quieter periods if I know when they are, or wait for a call back, but I do object to wasting hours of my day listening to their inane music / ‘your call is important to us’ messages.

that's fair enough then !! 😁

You’ll appreciate this card, then!

HMRC does not use AI on its website.

I was listening to something about this on radio 4 last week, I think it was on Moneybox. They (HMRC) have essentially closed their telephone helpline in the run up to the self assessment deadline of 31st January.

They do not use AI in their online help section because it's not yet possible to guarantee that it wouldn't tell you something that isn't true. The last thing HMRC wants is a computer telling people something that's illegal or misleading regarding their tax affairs.

Oh Lord yes, I have had several run ons with Talk Talk on the phone.

Most recently we wanted to try to move to fibre so we started online and it looked promising but then it said we had to call instead. So we did. Several long calls ensued when we got passed around from one department to the other until finally they told us it was unavailable at our address. But literally the first question all of them asked before proceeding was our postcode.

Another time I had an email problem and was on the phone to a nice young lady in India for over an hour before she said she didn't know the answer and would have to raise a ticket. That never hit responded to.

Have you tried Community Talk Talk? I have usually found the people on that are the most help.

My HA have it so that after so long of waiting on the phone, you press 1, give your details and then they call you back. Easier than waiting around for someone to answer!

We're chasing probate, it's been a year and still no movement on a simple will. DH has waited hours and then being cut off second after it's answered

You could take on temporary staff if there are sufficient people available willing to do that short term work at the rate being offered. But we're talking about jobs that are only going to be for a short period, ie don't offer much security. The busiest period doesn't fall within uni holidays, meaning it won't suit one of the largest groups of people who want temp, seasonal work. Of necessity it would have to be set hours, which puts some people off even if they'd have the sense to allow remote work. All these things would be recruitment downsides. It would have to be quite well paid to compensate, in the current market.

Annual hours sounds like an interesting idea though. As a general rule, roles with more flexibility are becoming more popular. It would have to be inflexible in January, no getting round that, but could maybe be sold as more flexibility at other times of the year?

Agreed.

Bloody Aviva wind me up for this. I spend ages checking and reading all the information they make available so if I am ringing up it is because it is for something that isn't covered in the normal FAQs.

Then I wait, usually a minimum of 40 minutes, to speak to a person, because of course they are experiencing a higher volume of calls than usual. When you do get through it turns out the first rank of call handlers really only know about as much as anyone would after reading the FAQs, so you go through the query and they end up saying they will have to direct you to another department.

But it is a bit hit or miss whether they do actually put you through to the relevant person. If you are lucky you finally get through to someone who knows what they are talking about. But can you ever get back to that person when you need to follow things up? Can you thump. You go through the whole messy process again and end up with a different person and a different department.

I once tried using an email address for a query and was given a ticket number and a date by which it should be resolved. It wasn't and my subsequent emails quoting the ticket number and asking for an update were ignored.

I had this with Saga last week. We got the renewal quote for our travel insurance, I found a more favourable quote elsewhere so needed to cancel our existing policy or at least ensure that it wasn't automatically renewed. There was no provision to do this on my online account, the renewal letter just said to ring them and gave a number. Did anyone answer? No. I tried five times during one day, similar amount the following day, tried every number I could find and still nothing. They kept telling me they were receiving an exceptionally high level of calls, that my call was important and they would answer my call as soon as possible. Hah.

I finally tried their online bot chat and also clicked on a Send Message button which eventually elicited an email response. However I then had emails from 3 separate advisers all asking the same information before I finally got one confirming that our policy would not be renewed.

All in all it took me nearly all week to do something which should have been actioned in a quick phone call. So, so frustrating.

That's even more shameful with Saga, considering that they push themselves as being on the side of older people, who are disproportionately much more likely to have health problems or be otherwise vulnerable and not be online.

@OrganicCamomileTea

This is what they use and what I have interpreted as AI

After the 6th pointless, iterative conversation with it yesterday, I gave up

That's terrible. There can't possibly have been 5 hours' worth of people before you who were also willing to wait that long, so there 100% has to be incompetent call handling going on somewhere there!

Online chats are pretty awful in my experience for anything other than the most simple queries.

Just to say that despite my yesterday ‘beef’ being with HMRC, I really feel for everyone experiencing frustration with this issue.

Maybe it’s time for a ‘name and shame’ list being publicised.

I have already stopped shopping online with The White Company, Hobbs, Jigsaw etc because of their awful customer service, but its not quite so easy with HMRC, DVLA, CMS, Insurance Companies, and the appalling Utility Companies.

But something has to be done !!

I've had most luck phoning them right at 8am when the phone lines first open. Most people hate making these phone calls and procrastinate it a bit, waiting until they've had a coffee and breakfast and done some tidying and only call when they really can't put it off any longer. Or they are calling from work so it's after they've got in, started work, checked emails, dealt with urgent queries etc.

@FatherJackHackettsUnderpantsHamper Exactly!

The simple answer with HMRC is to write to them, copying in their complaints department. Works every time: I have even been paid compensation for their mistakes.

My pet hate is long recorded phone messages that are 6-7 minutes of info and pressing buttons until you are cut off after a ‘please visit our website to answer your query’ response. There’s no option to select other than the options that are on the website, so you can’t actually resolve any issues- only access information that doesn’t cover issues

That "chat" doesn't use AI. It's essentially just a load of prepared answers to the most commonly asked questions. It's an FAQ. You ask it a question and it pops up with the most relevant "answer".

If you have a complicated question or one that relates only to your own unique circumstances, it won't be able to supply an answer.

@Tremblingmadness this is the episode of Moneybox that I referred to.

Listen from 18 minutes 30 seconds onwards to hear the HMRC spokesperson talking about the online chat help on HMRC's website.

Moneybox, Radio 4, 6th January.

@FrangipaniBlue - I had to call them in September (they owed me money) and waited 1hr and 2 minutes for them to answer. I then had to speak to the most bored sounding person who said she would escalate the complaint (I hadn't complained just asked how long 'shortly' was as per the letter I'd received 8 weeks previously). She also gave me incorrect information (how much they owed me - she was £2k under the actual figure). I asked if she was in an office (the noise in the background sounded like there was a party) and was told that she worked from home as do most of her colleagues. Apparently they 'cant' answer calls if their 'Internet is down'! How convenient eh?