.....15 minutes now and counting. Virgin Mobile. All I want is a Pac code 🙁
15 minutes of my life I won't get back.
15 minutes is nowt lad. Stick with it, you've a way to go yet.
I've done close to an hour with HMRC recently
in the late 90's I worked for Orange at a call centre when PAYG phones were first launched.
On xmas day we were nearly fully staffed and the call queue to register and activate the phones was over 4 hours. I hung up on a few people who launched into a tirade of abuse when I answered their call. I was probaby off shift when they got through again.
That used to be typical of Orange back in the day. Probably about 20-30mins IME on a normal day. Work probably got a bill from PRS cartel because of the amount of music that came out of that speakerphone.
....still waiting..
Lost my credit card and was put on hold for 30 mins. Then got a £30 bill for the call. :-\
Yay, only 23 minutes. 🙂
I think I spent close to 40mins on hold to Scottish Power last year, only to be told that they couldn't sort out what I wanted them to sort out. Luckily it was an 0800 number that I found on saynoto0870...
I did about 40 minutes one time trying to buy a sega master system from an ad in a magazine- it was seriously cheap, so they were mobbed. At the exact moment a harassed person picked up the phone and said "hello" my mum took the phone off me and shouted at me for running up a pointless bill, and slammed it down.
That must have been over 20 years ago but I feel like now that I've told you guys, I can move on.
over two hours on New Years Day 2000 waiting for someone to pick up from Greenflag. During the night someone had made the most inept theft attempt imaginable on my car - its like the Incredible Hulk had tried to steel it, and they'd left it undrivable and unsecurable and open to the elements so I needed to get it towed to somewhere secure.
The hold music they had was Aretha Frankins 'Come on and Rescue Me', but only about 70% of it before it loops back to the beginning mid-bar.
Had to call Greenflag again this year and 14 years later its the same loop.
Just tried to use NPowers' call back system, I waited the promised 33 mins, my mobile rings and then they hung up as soon as I pressed "1" to identify myself...
60 minutes with NTL once. I should have billed them for my time.
Rather topically we used to have to deal with City-Link far too often,and it wasn`t unusual to stay on hold for 20-odd minutes at a time,a couple of times per day.I used to ring them and hold them on speaker phone as background music,to the point of subconsciously humming the hold message at the strangest times outside of the working environment.
I didnt exactly celebrate their recent demise,but I wasnt at all surprised either.
My boss has started keeping track of how long it takes cold-callers to hang up if he just puts the phone to one side - 5mins somethingorother of them talking to an empty line is the current record (I secretly suspect that having 5 mins of pretending to sell counts as a nice break for them). With the spectacularly abusive callers to the CSA my sister had to deal with, she'd go for "please hold..." and then whistle the theme to The Magic Roundabout down the phone until the other end exploded 😆
On xmas day we were nearly fully staffed and the call queue to register and activate the phones was over 4 hours. I hung up on a few people who launched into a tirade of abuse when I answered their call. I was probaby off shift when they got through again.
I used to work in a call centre in the early 90s, where the automated "press 1 for... " systems weren't commonplace, so a caller would just hear a ringing tone till they got through. Wait times of over an hour were the norm, and as it got worse we'd have customers complain that they were getting cut off; seems that BT will terminate the call if it's been ringing for two hours without being picked up.
"RIGHT YOU FUC..." *click* was a very common occurrence for us too.
World Records over two weeks
nearly got caught out by the public sector, on Mon 29th Dec
anwser, greensleevesalike - all our operatives are busy, you are being held in a queue, please wait for an operator, greensleevesalike - all our operatives are busy, you are being held in a queue, please wait for an operator, etc etc, after about 25 minutes I gave up (*it was urgent)
phoned main reception (of same office) - human being, I'm terribly sorry all of our departsments are now closed till Mon 5th Jan.....
"Your call [i]is[/i] important to us..." - no, that's blatantly a lie, or you'd have employed enough staff to take it.
50 minutes - hmrc, more than once!
On hold to our internal support desk a the moment, been waiting for 20 minutes so far and the music is dreadful quality, distorting and keeps looping every 30 seconds or so.
We're supposed to be one of the top IT outsourcing providers in the world yet we can't even pick up the phone to our own people... 😐
To access a certain part of my work office we have to phone up the alarm company to remotely open the lock after every weekend on a dedicated 'Priority' line. The record for being unanswered is 7 hours. Not bad considering we own the alarm company...
31 minutes now and still waiting.....
Damn that reminds me I need to ring O2 for a pac code. Gave up after half an hour on Saturday.
I've just rang HMRC - their speech recognition system is impressive, those things normally need several attempts to get it right. Only 2 rings after I got put through to a person. Less than 5 minutes in all.
IKEA online was my worse experience on hold - 40 minutes.
Cheltenham and Gloucester - 30 minutes
After 54 minutes someone answered my call then immediately hung up on me.
As I have a significant amount of contact with the management of this desk there will be some arsekicking going on very shortly.....
When I worked for TSB many years ago I once was put on hold to an internal call centre, I had a very angry customer staring at me across the desk, after 2 1/2 hours (customer said he would wait all week if that's what it took to get an answer) someone claiming to be a cleaner picked up the phone and said everyone in the department had gone home for the day.
Customer and all of his family closed their accounts the next day.
WeQ4U
i used to get that with orange in the old days...you ring up from a landline and you would have to wait a minimum 30 minutes before someone could be bothered speaking to you. but if you call them from your mobile you got through to someone straight away...calls to orange from their mobiles was free so it didnt seem any point in leaving you on hold...i hated them for that
I was on hold to a supplier trying to identify a spare for a boiler once for over an hour. This was in July so they won't have been busy, it's even worse in December/January.
58 minutes after an internal transfer to eBay this morning, hung up and tried again thinking maybe a different first-level support could do something different... now on hold again for six minutes and counting.
I've been on hold to the local surgery for a while. By the time they answer I may have either a) recovered or b) gone towards the light 😉
Many years ago, I was trying to get through to someone at the student loans company. After endless holds and transfers and looking like I would never get through to someone, I just cancelled the standing order instead. Didn't take them long to call me after that 🙂