Your call is important to us!!!!!!! Yeah, right!

Recently I feel as if life is passing me by because I am hold waiting for the next available operator!

Last week I needed to call the bank for work. I rang one dept, who gave me a number for another dept, who gave me a number..... well, you get the idea.

5 numbers later Outward payments gave me a number for Periodic payments who, I was assured, were the only people who could answer my question.

I waited for 15 mins, then hung up and rang the main office who confirmed the number and re-iterated, I needed to speak to Periodic payments. I rang again - half an hour later, I'm still being assured that the next available operator will be with me soon. Again, I hung up - toilet break and coffee were becoming too urgent to ignore.

On my return I realised that the desk next to me was vacant for the day so I could dial the number on loudspeaker and leave it ringing while I continued with my other work. After the elevator music had been gradually infiltrating my brain for an hour, I decided my call was not that important to them, and hung up.

I rang the main office and expressed my immense frustration ( in a calm and controlled manner of course) and they said they would look into it for me.

The following day I had an email, from the Periodic payment section of the bank. Could I please ring them on a completely different number.

I did so, and they answered before the 2nd ring. A brief discussion highlighted the problem. Some months ago they had changed the numbers used. The one I had been given had not been used for several months, didn't have a phone plugged in to ring, and no-one had thought to change the message that people got on ringing it to one giving us some useful information - such as: this number has been changed to....... Equally - tell the other departments!!!!

And so, I worked out in total I had wasted almost 3 hours hanging on to a phone that was never going to be answered - at least the bank had the decency to apologise to me!

And so to today - a home matter this time - EDF, electricity. This time 15 minutes hanging on to speak to someone, then 20 minutes while they went to sort something out. Then later on, a further 15 minutes waiting to speak to someone and another 15 minutes while they went to find something out.

And no, there really wasn't any other way to sort the problem other than to speak to someone because it was their error in the first place that I was trying to sort out.

Oh, there has to be a better way.