We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes. Your wait may be longer than usual.

200sols said:
It's code.

'We don't want to invest in proper customer services, we are happy for you to wait on the phone for hours and hopefully give up in the end'
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You're not supposed to get through to call centres. "Hold please." Put through on the spin dryer to eventually cut off at some point. BT is a perfect example.

Some people on BT's help line can be there up to 2 hours.
 
dLockers said:
You know there isn't enough numbers in the world for your number to be totally unique/unknown? I had a friend whose number assigned an old recycled taxi rank number. That was super annoying.
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A relative had constant calls for a Chinese takeaway. Turns out one of the menus for this takeaway had the number misprinted with the last two numbers swapped round.

Eventually BT gave them a new number.
 
V F said:
You're not supposed to get through to call centres. "Hold please." Put through on the spin dryer to eventually cut off at some point. BT is a perfect example.

Some people on BT's help line can be there up to 2 hours.
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I remember going on the phone to BT, pressed the relevant options. Then about four menus later, I heard the first menu options.
 
cheesefest said:
I remember going on the phone to BT, pressed the relevant options. Then about four menus later, I heard the first menu options.
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Even last year Royal Mail had a 1 hour queue back at the start of October. I hate how you can wait 10 - 20 minutes then it can cut you off. Even though there was no click, it went completely silent. Or the irritating music that is defeaning.
 
dLockers said:
You know there isn't enough numbers in the world for your number to be totally unique/unknown? I had a friend whose number assigned an old recycled taxi rank number. That was super annoying.
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It is not the whole world, it just needs to be for your telephone dialing code of which there should be ample combinations for each household or premises to have a number even now that hasn't been used before.

That being said, you can end up with a number that was previously and recently used at another property, which is why I specifically asked if that is what happened in my case, to which I was assured "definitely not" but obviously I can't be sure.
 
MartinPrince said:
It is not the whole world, it just needs to be for your telephone dialing code of which there should be ample combinations for each household or premises to have a number even now that hasn't been used before.

That being said, you can end up with a number that was previously and recently used at another property, which is why I specifically asked if that is what happened in my case, to which I was assured "definitely not" but obviously I can't be sure.
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It's a semi random combo of numbers. There are rainbow tables with every possible combo available online.
 
I reckon some call centres purposely put customers on hold for 20-30 mins before you speak to someone.

Also hate ringing telecommunications call centres which mention for a list of help, please visit our website. Well the bloody reason you are ringing them as your internet is down!!!
 
Then the voice control call centres are awful. I don’t have an accent. I speak slowly.

Automated voice “What is the reason for your call today”
Me “cancel my policy”
AV “I put you through to the claims department”

Me “Grrr” ends call and starts again. Most call centres don’t transfer people to the right departments
 
Diddums said:
This winds me up no end, and it's all our fault. The fact that we as a society sit back and go "yanno what, I'll work around your greed and incompetence" and then sit for 20 minutes in hold as if this is perfectly acceptable behaviour. What we should be saying is "we pay your for a service, now provide the bloody service or I'll find someone who will".

Same with right to repair, subscription models, microtransactions in full-price games and my latest one - paying £17 for a ticket to the cinema only to have to sit through 15 minutes of ads. Hang on, we paid for a film, why are we seeing ads?

Personally I try to avoid any of this nonsense as much as possible as it's quite frankly ridiculous that companies are getting away with it.

I wonder how BMW's £15/month fee for already-installed heated seats is going.
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I can explain the cinema one. From that £17, the cinema itself will get about 50p, the rest goes to the film distributors. That's why you get ads and extortionate food/drink prices. Those are the things that keep the lights on, pay the staff wages etc.

Dis86 said:
My personal favourite was when I worked for a large unnamed mobile provider who definitely don't have Kevin Bacon advertising for them.
Sat in a meeting with their uk head of customer service who was reflecting on customer satisfaction scores and how we shouldn't take stock of the fact that the Indian call centres constantly had atrocious customer service scores as it was down to nothing more than customer prejudices.
He was very confused when I asked why we had them if the customers simply didn't like them, seeing as our duty was customer service.
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Dis86 said:
Totally agree. Plus they were actually terrible. We had a team who's job was basically to fix the messes of people's accounts resulting from their incompetence.
In their defence their training was also very poor.
There were also significant issues around data protection.
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MartinPrince said:
I have a Virgin home phone that I have NEVER used or given out to a soul; not even my mum or missus has the number.. A fews weeks after first getting it I started getting calls from folks with Indian accents trying to sell me whatever or scam me.

When I contacted Virgin to complain about this breach (after the 'we are experiencing higher call volumes....' message) the Indian person at the Virgin call centre insisted my number couldn't possibly have been leaked from their side or sold to 3rd parties and maybe I didn't know what an Indian accent sounded like.... I replied, "they sounded like you!"
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My Mrs used to work for a big mobile firm, can't tell you which because of what I'm about to say, but they regularly had investigations for data breaches & misconduct by overseas call centres, so much so that they employed UK call centres to fix the screwups via an outbound call. She said one of the common comments on calls that went to these fixers was 'thank god I've got someone who speaks English'. Unfortunately it wasn't long before the overseas found out the dept existed and started dumping ALL calls to them, ignoring the rule of no transfers.
 
I've been trying to get on Barclaycard live chat for a month and it's always offline "Sorry, we’re receiving a high number of chats right now and at times it may take us longer than we’d like to get back to you"
 
Resident said:
Many call centres are actually still WFH. Because they're not easily 'micro-managed' many workers toss it off leading to longer call times.
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Not sure how true this is - I have a few friends who work in call centres, and have been working from home since COVID.

Their calls are routed via their laptop, and the software which facilitates and organises the calls tracks call length/frequency/number of all the time. Their manager has access to this information live, so if they're not on a call, but there are people in the queue, they're contacted.
 
Dis86 said:
Totally agree. Plus they were actually terrible. We had a team who's job was basically to fix the messes of people's accounts resulting from their incompetence.
In their defence their training was also very poor.
There were also significant issues around data protection.
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I worked for a different mobile provider for 10 years, and we went from the highest rated customer support (based in the UK) to offshore call centres and the difference was alarming. It reminded me of a German saying "We must save money, whatever the cost".

The funniest one was when we found out that legit iPhone unlock codes were being sold on eBay by people in the outsourced Indian call centres using our own Apple iPhone system which was supposed to have heavily restricted access. God knows what else they were doing with valuable customer data.
 
Fluffybob said:
I've been trying to get on Barclaycard live chat for a month and it's always offline "Sorry, we’re receiving a high number of chats right now and at times it may take us longer than we’d like to get back to you"
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Don't forget that despite them not wanting to talk to you, your call is very important to them!
 
MrRockliffe said:
Not sure how true this is - I have a few friends who work in call centres, and have been working from home since COVID.

Their calls are routed via their laptop, and the software which facilitates and organises the calls tracks call length/frequency/number of all the time. Their manager has access to this information live, so if they're not on a call, but there are people in the queue, they're contacted.
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Which probably explains the frequent "Please wait a few moments while I look into this. I will put you on hold and come back shortly"... 5 mins later...
 
adolf hamster said:
i just follow through until i get a human then ask them to put me through to the correct department.
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I said to one of these automated voice numbers "I would like to speak to a human". "Sorry that's not possible". Or if you stay silent, some do transfer to a human or worse end the call.
 
cheesefest said:
I said to one of these automated voice numbers "I would like to speak to a human". "Sorry that's not possible". Or if you stay silent, some do transfer to a human or worse end the call.
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They can also do it if they mishear you several times they just give up and put you through.

Once you're through to a human they generally dont have an issue transferring you to the correct department if you're nice about it.
 
When I banked with Halifax, there was a phone number on saynoto0870 . com. It sent you to the switchboard at their Leeds call centre which is massive, near to the Leeds Arena. Ask them to transfer to customer services and they did. I think I jumped the queue too as never heard hold music. Halifax must have stopped that now.
 
Call it contraversial, but having tried to open a bank account for my son the other week and the 3 days it took with the crazy 5 hour video/telephone call marathon and being brushed off in branch, I'm starting to think the real issue here is gross inefficiency from people working from home..

In branch the reason given was due to people working from home 2-3 days a week they don't have the staff in branch to deal with a lot of requests, so there are a lot less in-branch booking slots available.
On the telephone call they kept bungling the call up and blaming it on working from home (we got cut off 4 times in 2 hours, interrupted by a screaming child and then told to phone back in 45 mins, strangely at 2:45 on a week day.. spookily enough time to go and pick the kids up from school).
On the video call they admitted they can't get through as many calls anymore and struggled with proof of identity aspects, so had to extend each slot to 45 mins from 30 mins..

I know we all love working from home, but the use cases for increased productivity are always brought out to promote it whilst it's obvious it doesn't work everywhere..

Of course, closing offices/reducing office size can have a huge impact on the financials, and so if you are OK with the drop in productivity and can blame the pandemic in passing all the aggro to the customer, then I can see the real driver for this.
 
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