Telephone wait times

peterhock

Banks are getting away with murder in not providing sufficient customer service staff to answer a phone call within a reasonable time. It surely does not hold water to say 'we are very busy right now and wait times are much longer than expected', for goodness sake we are a year on from the start of the pandemic. Banks are doing this because they know they can get away with it. I cite the case of Halifax, where I wished to make a transfer of £25,000 from a personal Bank Account to somewhere else. I made an on-line transfer, which was blocked with an instruction to call a number belonging to their fraud department. All very commendable you might say, they are safeguarding your money. Well, I tried to call this number on four occasions, Friday and Saturday, at different times of the day. I was told the wait times were over 40 minutes (best) to over 60 minutes (worst). I am very busy and was unable to wait that long. Some organisations have a number call back system. Halifax don't and the wait times are simply unacceptable. Barclays also are guilty of this, as I am sure many Banks also are.

My money is still held up, it seems the only way to get it released is to bite the bullet and wait in the queue.

Does anyone else feel as frustrated as I am with these wait times?

castle96

do it in several 'chunks' ?

Missus_Hyde

I had a similar problem with Lloyds; I sent £1000 to a new account and like you was stopped by the fraud dept. and given a number to ring.

It took me a wait for 40 minutes before the phone was answered; actually I don't have any sympathy and by the time the phone was answered, I was really fed up with them ( I actually don't care whether they're "working from home", either they're open for business or they're not. 🙄) The problem was sorted eventually, but all in all I was on the phone for almost an hour.

Having said that, I received a phone call from my local branch of Lloyds on an unrelated matter; I knew it was legit. as I recognised the person who rang me. That was fine and he couldn't have been more helpful.

colsten

If it is something critically important, as in your case, I just put the phone to one side and get on doing other things, like painting my nails, whilst I keep listening to the muzzak until they answer.

You can also raise a formal complaint if the wait time irritates you. Although the processing of your claim would tie up more of the bank's resources.

maxximus75

I'd rather wait in a queue for 40-60 minutes (you can always put the phone on speaker if you have that function, and get on with other things whilst waiting) rather than the bank not completing security checks for possible fraud and you loosing out on £25,000?

Yes, it's an inconvenience and I agree, a lot of companies are using the pandemic as an excuse but with the amount of fraud going around, I'd certianly go through this kind of hoop - I am a very busy person, too!

DCFC79

Cal times for me calling the banks have been pretty good, needed to ring 3 banks today and the call was answered in under 3 minutes. I tried last week about 7 30pm and the wait time was about 20 minutes.

KxMx

Tried Live Chat on HSBC Friday, 50 minutes before I connected to an agent and another 15 before they could sort out my simple request. 

born_again

It always amazes me that the people that complain about waiting times, are the ones that spend ages complaining, hold times, hold music etc. If only they thought of others and did what they wanted and got off the phone, calls would get answered quicker.