To find this Martin Lewis tweet fucking hilarious (if you've got a service provider you need to contact, jump on his bandwagon)

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Martin Lewis is picking up the question of whether service companies have now just 24/7 adopted a "we are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls" message, whether they are or not. Good on him.

I'm finding his X/Twitter comments absolute comedy gold. Lots of replies tagging companies who they can't get through to and customer service absolutely SCURRYING to help and grovel.

So if there's anyone you're trying to get in touch with who won't return your call, this might be the tweet to tag them in!! 😂

x.com/martinslewis/status/1754499137125442002?s=46&t=XqfZWmueAqpogLDM-t6xcg

Also, sympathy if you're the person who is stuck on social media customer service with no control over whether this lying message is played to everyone who runs your company!

Thanks, op. Will keep an eye on that. Should be interesting.

Martin Lewis is absolutely right, that seems to be the standard message on any business you try and call.
Customer service took a nose dive during the pandemic and hasn't recovered imo.

Funny how quickly the tweet replies from companies appear.

It’s almost like these companies have invested more in their social media presence than expanding their customer service teams 🤔

I had the same issue. There was a crossed line problem with another flat in the block. Every time there was a new tenant the same thing would happen. I think it was 4 times in the 5 years I was there. The one time I missed the letter, they cancelled and charged me a huge cancellation fee. When I contested, they said they knew there was a problem but there was nothing they could do, because finishing a contract early means a penalty! I must have been on the phone for 20 hours or more - mostly waiting for someone to answer, trying to sort it out.

On the other hand, I had to speak to HMRC recently, and after the large number of initial security etc, questions etc, I wasn't waiting for too long before someone answered!!

This drives me nuts. Everyone on the planet has a phone now and yet it's impossible to speak to anyone. What happened to customer service?!

In our surgery they really mean it too!

My GP surgery has similar.

Asked to press option 3 to speak to a member of staff. You press option 3.

You then get an automated message about how they are experiencing a high volume of calls and how you cannot be transferred to a member of staff.

It goes on to tell you to call back at another time and terminates the call.

“Your call is important to us”. For which read, “we run customer service on a shoe string and don’t give a fuck about you call”.

Oh this is funny! Everything I ring one of these companies I get the unusually high volume of calls message. Yet I've never had an exceptionally long wait for an answer (except with the local surgery who always have a long wait but don't actually have that message as far as I remember 😂)

It doesn’t if you owe them money though, just if they’ve over paid you or you’re trying to sort out child benefit or something.

Just had to phone Britannia Rescue and got through straight away. Same thing happened a couple of months ago. So highly recommend their customer service and response time (way, way better than the RAC, who we used to be with).

Lloyds Bank, on the other hand... wasted hours and hours of my life trying to get a human on the phone. "Unusually high" call volumes compared with what? Compared with the number of people who used to phone them in the 18th century?

They may have extended the on-hold time now, but the DWP's PIP enquiry number used to keep you on hold for an hour, then disconnect the call. The only time you stood a chance of actually getting through before the hour was up was to ring on the dot of 9am, when the phone lines first open.

There was a bit of a fuss about it when it came out that over a million calls had been automatically cut off after the hour and they had to redeploy staff to deal with the calls to reduce the waiting time.

One of my colleagues found that after 4pm was the best time to ring, but that was no help to me, because I finish work at 2.30.

I was pleasantly surprised when I called the Passport Office to query something the other week. They picked up almost immediately!

It won't be like that in May/June though, so if you need to renew a passport before the summer, consider doing it now.

Exactly!!!

Ha, you should tweet ML that one 😆 couldn't be more appropriate!