hold music - Customer services - have you experienced THIS...??

mrwendal

Hi there - I don't know if i've come across a potential scam or not where phone companies play white noise down the phone in addition to music/messages, what do you think?

Just something that I've been thinking about a bit since moving from Orange to Vodafone.

I remember that when dialling through to them and going through the various options, you would get the usual, 'please continue to hold, your call is important to us' type of message followed by music, followed by message, etc, etc.

Now, with Orange, the voice saying 'please hold' was clear and uninterrupted, yet the music they played was intermittent. It drifts inbetween music / noise plus it goes quiet for a second or two and then the music cuts back in. It almost sounds like you've gone out of signal or that the line is bad. However, when the message kicks in each 30 seconds or so, this is as clear as anything.

I'm now with Vodafone and I've noticed that their hold music/message does EXACTLY the same thing!!!!

It makes me wonder if this is some kind of scam by the companies to make you, the customer, think that the call is lost or not worth staying on the line for due to the 'bad signal' and thereby reducing a) the number of calls they recieve by getting more dropped calls, which gives the knock-on effect of less callers in the queue and therefore b) shorter waiting times for those that do hang on.

Maybe it's just me - has anyone else experienced this? What do you think?

jf2404

I have experienced this before, i'm not sure what the problem is, but even when i worked for Vodafone, calling through to other departments for the customer even the staff have to listen and wait in the que to get through.

Not sure if it is ascam or if it's just dodgy music tapes.

I'm normally talking over it with something along the lines of "hurry up, hurry up" , or cursing how high my last phone bill is eventhough i did make all the calls. :-)

CrazyChemist_2

visit https://www.saynoto0870.com and treat yourself to some non 0845/0870 and extra freephone numbers. This should lower your phone bill! See Martin's article/post on it in the Home Phones Board

Enjoy!

mrwendal

Just to make myself clear - i was more interested in the 'white noise' and fading in/out, rather than the fact that these companies play music and keep you hanging on (also whilst on an 0870 number on many occasions too).

Having said that - I am still grateful for the other comments and links to petition against 0870 numbers, etc!

Thanks!