Acceptable to time to be on hold?

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Soldato
Joined
27 Mar 2013
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3,864
Location
Nottingham
What do you deem as an acceptable time to be on hold? Personally I have all the patience in world and will only phone a company that I know will have me on hold when I have nothing that needs my urgent attention to do.

I ask cause I've spent a fair bit of time on hold recently, currently am 20 minutes in to EVGA and I'm so thought I'd make a pointless thread :P, past few days I've been on the phone to sky too and spent 40 odd minutes on hold then put on hold a few time during the call.

I know people that if they are on hold for 5 minutes they will huff and puff. Then after 15 minutes hang up. Do these people not realise that will get them no were?

Another thing that ****** me off is people that shout/get short with people on the phone, 99% of the time, that person is doing as they were trained to do/the screen tells them and I know a little bit of common sense could be used on the customer service end sometimes but shouting gets you no where in life.

FYI now 24 minutes in :P
 
Having dealt with EVGA's email system in the past I thought I'd try calling them. Emails were always 1-2 day replies never really getting anywhere then after 1-2 weeks I'd have an RMA set up :P

Its been 39 Minutes now.

As Hippo said live chat that know what they are doing is always the best resource.
 
I'd like to see a law change in the UK where if you have to wait on a premium custiomer support line for more than 5mins, then the company starts paying you instead of the other way round.
 
been averaging 20 mins with BT today had to phone them a few times as they have messed up our broadband order. Would normally live chat but its even slower today
 
Well I called BT Customer service in the week and had to wait over 70 mins to talk to someone lol ! In this day and age that is beond degusting ! I was not pleased , The FACR they make millions every year and own the phone network you would think they would invest in a better call centre and staff ! obvouisly not
 
5-10 mins is my limit... after that I consider if I want to stay with that company. Not so bad if it's free but when I'm paying for it then you know it should be quicker.
I've even rung 'sales' a few times, funny how they can pick up in a few rings, after a long hold and got transferred because 'I felt like the customer service line wasn't working' due to the amount of time on hold...

Got the same issue with appointments... whats the point of a set time for your appointment if you're not in within 10 mins of that time. If we're late they complain or won't even see you....
 
On paid for lines is annoying, i swear they just do it as a money making racket.

At work is different, unless im told a time to drop the phone i'll wait and work away in the background.
 
It depends on how important it is to talk to someone about it. I will stay until I speak to someone or have to do something else.

A very important thing to remember is not matter how long you have been waiting, it highly unlikely to be the fault of the person you speak to first, so please be nice and polite.
 
It used to be 45 minutes regularly for one of our main service providers, that was fun... They then re-arranged the Auto-attendant and hold times were typically down to 5 minutes.

Home stuff, it depends on what I'm calling about but I can't say I've really sat on hold for longer than 5-10 minutes for something, I think the only time I exceeded that was HMRC but I ended up calling on a Saturday early morning and got through within about 2 minutes.

At work we have workarounds for most of the support lines, Account Managers to raise tickets on our behalf for example. Or in the case of BT Business Support I've got a half-DDI that skips the entire IVR system and seems to put you at the front of the queue :D
 
lsg1r said:
5-10 mins is my limit... after that I consider if I want to stay with that company. Not so bad if it's free but when I'm paying for it then you know it should be quicker.
I've even rung 'sales' a few times, funny how they can pick up in a few rings, after a long hold and got transferred because 'I felt like the customer service line wasn't working' due to the amount of time on hold...

Got the same issue with appointments... whats the point of a set time for your appointment if you're not in within 10 mins of that time. If we're late they complain or won't even see you....
Click to expand...

Try family Court:
9:30am hearing
Time you go in 3:30pm
 
NTL (ScumTL) were the worst back in the early 2000s. 45 minutes on hold and that was a sales line!! Dread to think what their tech support line would have been like. Things got a lot better though after they got taken over by Richard Branson.
 
Has there ever been a time when any organisation you telephone isn't telling you they are suffering from "unusually high call volumes"?

Seems to me if they are suffering it permanently, it's not unusual
 
I worked in Customer Services for a ISP in my area and for me, I'd put someone on hold for the minimum amount of time as possible. Sometimes it would be a minute or two others it would be longer. However if it was a more indepth query we'd tell the customer we'd call them back rather than keep them on hold.
Before I worked in that environment I'd only put up with being on hold for 5-10 minutes but I've learned now that sometimes depending on the situation you can't sort a problem that quickly.
 
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