"I've been on hold for 20 minutes!"

[MystyGlyttyr]

Sounds familiar?

Guess what? I said it, and guess what else, I'm not exaggerating.

Short version, I was trying to call Walgreens to renew a prescription for my mom. When I finally got sick of waiting on hold, I took the phone away from my ear and checked the timer. It was up to 18 minutes and 58 seconds. And that's not counting about five minutes beforehand that it took me just to get through the automated system (three tries, each needing it's own hang-up and redial) and get ONTO hold.

My mother burnt through about 20 minutes on her cell phone before she hung up and called me to try it on the house phone. I finally got fed up and called her back, so she and my dad are going to just go by and do it in person and wait the half hour in the store.

The entire time, the crappy hold music kept getting interupted by "We're sorry to keep you waiting, there is...ONE...call ahead of you. The next available associate will be with you shortly."

Now I know for a fact this Walgreens pharmacy has at least three lines. So how the hell were they ALL busy the entire time? And not just them, but when I tried to call just the Walgreens store proper to see if maybe the pharmacy was on FIRE or something, I kept getting busy signal after busy signal.

Well, on the plus side, I had enough time to cook and eat an entire pizza...

[AriRashkae]

Probably what happened the last few times my husband had to call Unemployment:

*Put all info into automated system
*wait on hold for 30-60 minutes (average. 1 time I clocked an hour and a half)
*talk to rep and give her all info you just put into system
*agree to hold "1 second, while I access something"
*get dropped back into hold queue for another 30 minutes
*get different rep and actually get issue resolved

He said it sounded like the same girl each time, but he never got her name.

[mattm04]

If it's like my store they will but a District Office of satellite Dist. Office in the store and not add additional phone lines. So when the DM is on his conf. calls he will tie up most of our lines, leading to a busy signal when customers or employees call, leading to complaints to corp, who do nothing about it.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

This is precisely why, kids, that landlines are still necessary. Some of us pay 25 bucks a month for our phones. True story.

[PepperElf]

This is precisely why, kids, that landlines are still necessary. Some of us pay 25 bucks a month for our phones. True story.

Or Skype!


and oy... i had the same thing with Verizon.
you'd think they'd want New Customers right?...

after being on hold forever, I finally got someone and I asked about the special I had a flyer for. I was told it didn't exist and was shuffled off to the wrong department.

FINALLY I got through (after a lot of run-around tag) and spoke to someone who knew about the flyer. Yay.... um no, no yay... it's not available for my apartment. sigh...

[blas]

The very very first time I called unemployment to get myself set up, I wasted an hour of my daytime minutes. At least 50 of those minutes were used on hold. The getting set up part was easy and took almost no time.

I'm so glad I don't need to call unemployment anymore if/when I get laid off. I just go online, sign in, fill out the questionnaire and times I'll be laid off, get my papers in the mail a few days later, then file my weekly claim the next Sunday, and viola....by about Wednesday or Thursday I get my check.

[Hyndis]

This is precisely why, kids, that landlines are still necessary. Some of us pay 25 bucks a month for our phones. True story.

Yup.

My record for being on hold was to Microsoft. A botched windows update hosed the system, which meant I had to reinstall. I couldn't, because I had used up my allotted installations for the XP key.

It took 5 hours on the line to a call center in India (seriously, you're not fooling anyone with those accents) for the issue to be resolved. I'm pretty sure they just gave me a new XP key just to get me to go away in the end.

On a landline, that call was free. If I had a cellphone (which I don't), that would have used up pretty much all of my time for the month.

[Becks]

My on hold record?

8 hours.

[Lil Bunny]

My on hold record?

8 hours.

*jawdrop* Go on...?

[Becks]

*jawdrop* Go on...?

Long story short, I needed a replacement part for a pager I once owned. (I miss it. It was so tiny and cute...) Called the place. Was on hold for 8 hours.

Nothing was resolved.

[Peppergirl]

Long story short, I needed a replacement part for a pager I once owned. (I miss it. It was so tiny and cute...) Called the place. Was on hold for 8 hours.

Nothing was resolved.

Jeezus.

Mine can't even compare to Becks, but when Atlanta got hit with their 'snowstorm' this weekend and cancelled 50 percent of their flights, their hold times were 1.5 to 2 hours.

That was when you could actually get through. It usually rang busy or had the 'all circuits are busy now' message.

It was particularly annoying for us, because people assume travel agents have some 'secret back line' that can get them through to the airline. Of course, those people decided it was MY fault and chose to scream at me for the busy signal and the weather.