Just curious, because I've been on hold with my college's Financial Aid department for one hour and thirty-seven minutes. Thank $DEITY for my cell phone's external speaker.
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What's Your Longest Time on Hold?
- Thread starter kalisphoenix
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iMeowbot said:
Christ. That makes my complaint look petty.
For what it's worth, I'm now at 3:04:00 and counting :/
It was quite real, the last step of a week-long attempt to get Verizon to fix an intermittent ADSL problem that they insisted was caused by "my" equipment that they had originally sent me, and there were no problems with the line. This lovely hold experience was after I paid them for a new box and the problem didn't go away, even with their box plugged directly into the NID. Apparently they have very, very few people who are allowed to actually make decisions. They ultimately fixed it, but never refunded me for that replacement bridge.iGary said:Six hours - all on hold, no conversation?
I call BS.
iMeowbot said:
Indeed. LOL@omnipotence -- after this distressing and humbling an experience, I'll be eternally impotent
The website I got the number from says that calls are only for general information -- to ensure confidentiality, no specific dollar amounts may be discussed, and if the question takes longer that five minutes to answer, the caller is requested to come in to the financial aid office.
I called at 9:04AM this morning. The phone rang for at least three minutes. I called back at 9:20AM or so, and got put on hold.
So assuming:
* The "phone ringing continuously" ailment was just a fluke, and people really had been connected to operators from 9AM on....
* 1 person is answering calls...
* They abide by their own rules (no calls longer than five minutes, calls answered in the order in which they came)...
* My math is correct...
* My call is answered six minutes from now....
That means that forty-six people called between 9AM and 9:20AM. None of these people hung up, and in fact they are waiting gamely (just like me) for their chance to speak to the Wizard of Oz -- er, glorified secretary.
I really wish I'd called their toll-free number, so that the bastards would be getting charged for this call.
I called Verizon for help setting up my WEP security in my modem's control panel. The modem had it's own password and I didn't know it so I called up for it. They didn't ask for the OS I'm using so when I'm talking to the guy, he asks, "what OS are you using?" and I'm the idiot to say Mac. He then says he has to transfer me to a mac specialist even though all I needed was the default password to my modem which is the same no matter what OS you're using it on. So I waited like an hour (not sure of the exact time because the call was a while ago) just to get the default password to my modem.
Probably a half hour. After that I either hangup out of frustration or starting hitting '0' a bunch of times until they patch me in.
6 hours.....damn I would of forgotten what I called for in the first place....might of even thank them for holding.
Bless
Bless
My longest time was 30 minutes... with Dell. I thought those couple of instances were pretty bad... 6 hours is insane.
3:45 minutes... trying to return some Storm Vac's my mom bought. Looked it up online and found the phone line isn't regularly monitored and the recording is on a 15 minute loop.
Rarely more than five minutes. That's about as long as I can stand hearing the recording, "your call is important to us..." without going into irony overdrive. I hang up.
After 5-10 minutes, I hang up, no matter how important the call is.
Then I try again some other time.
Then I try again some other time.
So kalisphoenix hasn't give us an update in three hours now...do you think he's just a skeleton with a phone up to his ear by now?
As someone who's spent the last month answering phones in the basement of a used textbook store, you have to give the operator at least a tiny bit of credit. Our store has only two lines, and it seems that they both are ringing CONSTANTLY this week. At one point, I had 4 people on hold at the same time while I was busy checking out angry customers. Sometimes we really do forget about you...
WildCowboy said:
I actually fell asleep. Then I woke up a bit later, and sure enough, I was still on hold.
I finally got an answer at just short of seven hours.... and the lady had the nerve to be impatient with me, since it was almost 4:30PM and time for her to leave.
40 + mins @ Sky + Helpline, then they said they couldnt help me cause my box was out of warranty :S
I was once on hold, sort of, for about 2 hours. I say "sort of" because I was trying to get a billing issue resolved with my cell phone company, and the smart-ass CSR wasn't being very helpful. I asked to speak with someone from accounting, and their process required that the CSR stay on the line with me while we waited.
Hee hee. Every 5 minutes he'd ask if I was sure I wanted to hold. Since I was at home with free minutes, and on speakerphone, I kept saying "sure". He was steamed by the time we got through.
I, however, made lunch, did some housework, etc. It was rather enjoyable.
Hee hee. Every 5 minutes he'd ask if I was sure I wanted to hold. Since I was at home with free minutes, and on speakerphone, I kept saying "sure". He was steamed by the time we got through.
I, however, made lunch, did some housework, etc. It was rather enjoyable.
Longest time I've been on hold was about an hour (maybe a little more), waiting to get through to dabs.com, back in the day when they still wanted to talk to customers over the phone.
Since then, I'm rarely on hold more than 10 minutes, otherwise I give up and call back another time.
Saying that, I work in a call centre for a major UK bank (part-time student employment) and when I first started, the average evening hold times were approx 45 minutes! They've since brought in a lot of new people and systems to improve all that and customers rarely have to wait longer than 2-3 minutes, I'd say 95% get through in under 30 seconds. It's always funny to get connected to a customer who's surprised they got through so quickly and are still fumbling around for their account details
I tend to be very sympathetic of call centre staff, its rarely their fault for calls queueing. Usually its because of management not accurately predicting the volume of calls for that evening and allowing too many staff to go home early based on their 'information'
Since then, I'm rarely on hold more than 10 minutes, otherwise I give up and call back another time.
Saying that, I work in a call centre for a major UK bank (part-time student employment) and when I first started, the average evening hold times were approx 45 minutes! They've since brought in a lot of new people and systems to improve all that and customers rarely have to wait longer than 2-3 minutes, I'd say 95% get through in under 30 seconds. It's always funny to get connected to a customer who's surprised they got through so quickly and are still fumbling around for their account details
I tend to be very sympathetic of call centre staff, its rarely their fault for calls queueing. Usually its because of management not accurately predicting the volume of calls for that evening and allowing too many staff to go home early based on their 'information'