British Gas over 1 hour on hold

jem16

black-saturn wrote:

To be fair you have rang at an extremely busy time. But they still shouldnt have left you on hold that long. Thats really unacceptable.

I phoned at 7.30 am and gave up after half an hour - is that a busy time too??

Believe me I have tried at various times, early, late, midweek, weekend - I have never got an answer yet.

mrbadexample

It depends on what department you are after....call back and select an option where they think they'll be getting money from you. (e.g. the option to leave a meter reading, so they can send you a bill).

As soon as you get through, ask to speak to a manager, get their name, explain the situation, tell them what you really wanted and insist they sort it.

They had me on hold for 25 minutes recently, before I got bored and gave up. I phoned back using the above tactic and was talking to someone within 3 minutes.

adr0ck

3 hours on hold

i'm giving up thanks everyone

Rickycowslip

Any chance that landline number on saynoto0870 is to a disconnected phone as I too have used that to no avail... anyone tried to get through on their 0845 numbers ? if these still require an hour plus to hold then that's one for Nicky Campbell

jem16

Rickycowslip wrote:

Any chance that landline number on saynoto0870 is to a disconnected phone as I too have used that to no avail... anyone tried to get through on their 0845 numbers ? if these still require an hour plus to hold then that's one for Nicky Campbell

I just tried 0845 6060852 - it says Billing Enquiries on saynoto0870 - and it got answered first time, no holding :j

I asked about my application for discounted electricity and was told there was a backlog of applications and was taking about 3 weeks.

Robert5988

adr0ck wrote:

its over 1 hour 45 mins now.....still on hold

ive used saynoto0870 to get the geogrphical number and phoned using 1899...so its luckily not cost me more than 3p....just cant believe that i am still on hold

unbelievable

are other energy providers similar?

Some of the 'saynoto1870' geographic numbers are now out of date.

Because firms get income from 0870/0845 numbers, a lot of firms change their geographic numbers to obstruct customers.

Try to get Sky to answer a Geographic number instead of their 0870 numbers.

BexTech

I used to repair the PCs in the British Gas call centres, and even though they had hundreds of PCs, 6 - 8 to a desk, there would be many desks with no staff on them, and the desks that did have staff on, there would only be 1 or two staff, and often the had put the phone on 'busy' so not to get calls.

When they did answer the call they would put you on hold when there was no need to, just so they could chat to someone else or even have a laugh about what your problem was!

black-saturn

jem16 wrote:

I phoned at 7.30 am and gave up after half an hour - is that a busy time too??

Believe me I have tried at various times, early, late, midweek, weekend - I have never got an answer yet.

OK, fair enough. Did you speak to anyone in the end?

jem16

black-saturn wrote:

OK, fair enough. Did you speak to anyone in the end?

I eventually tried an 0845 number that was meant for Billing Enquiries - got through with no holding at all.

Didn't exactly get my question answered though. I wanted to know what was happening with my discounted electricty application (I'm an existing customer) which was made two weeks ago. She couldn't check it for me as it was made online but there was a backlog of applications and they were taking about 3 weeks.

smartie1976

I have never experienced a hold time of that long.
I work for BG, and I can assure you that customers are not put on hold 'just for fun', neither are they purposely made to wait because staffing numbers are low.
There are strict call times to be adhered to.
In fact, I always call the external number if I need to ring for any BG query about my account, and I've never been in a queue longer than about 10 mins, irrespective of what time of day (although to be fair, I would never ring at peak times, which are probably between 8-10am, and 4-7 pm).
I can't believe there wasn't some sort of problem with the number you called for you to be queued for that amount of time. In fact, I've just called them now and I was through to an advisor in 1m 12 sec.

If you have a specific number for a query and you are unable to get through, ring a general number and ask to be xferred. Or submit your question online. There are also additional phone numbers online if you do not have the number you want.