I see that a whistleblower has told The Mail on Sunday that HMRC have issued orders earlier this month for call centre operators to handle incoming calls in a way that will make them last around three minutes longer.All very well, except that as I noted in 2008 HMRC numbers are 0845.
According to Which? a 10-minute call from a BT landline to a normal geographic line costs about 40p at most, while the same call to 0845 number could cost up to 60p (50% higher).
HMRC state that they do not receive money from their phone service provider (Cable and Wireless).
I am sure that they don't.
However, it is more than likely that within their agreement with C&W their is a clause that states part of the revenue that C&W earns from calls should be used to offset the fees it charges HMRC.
I guess the cost of a phone call to HMRC is what one might call a stealth tax?
Tax does have to be taxing.
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When did this become new news???? Its always been a 3 min call handling time.............
ReplyDelete3 mins longer
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting what HMRC are not saying. They aint denying that they are asking staff to delibratly extend the call, only that they aint asking them to do it to make money, but at the end of day, it is costing the person who calls more
ReplyDeleteI posted the orig comment and to be completely honest, i hadnt heard this as yet.....
ReplyDeleteThey're so hot on our stats that i'd be incredibly surprised if its true.
it's definitely true that staff are being told to keep people on the phone longer. they have to do everything that would normally be done after the call while the person is still on the phone even though there is no need for them still to be there.
ReplyDeleteIf customers dont want to pay for the call they can go into the local enquiry centre when they are in town and it will not cost them
ReplyDeleteI am NOT a customer, I am a tax payer!!! I find HMRC's use of the term "customer" as not only patronising but also insulting. I HAVE to pay tax whether I like it or not. Use of the term "customer" implies an element of choice... and we have NO choice!!!
ReplyDelete0845 numbers are free on BT calling plans as well as on a number of other companies calling plans.If people took the time to check their tariffs they would not find charges of 60p/min as you are stating. To actually suggest HMRC makes money either from direct profit from C & W or that C & W offsets this profit against the fees it charges IS SHITE as you would put it.
ReplyDeleteHMRC currently makes contributions towards the cost of having a number of 0845 lines so in fact lays out money for this.
HMRC has not informed its employees to keep callers on the line for longer to make a profit but to ensure that queries are fully resolved during the first point of contact therefore removing the need to make subsequent calls. This is yet another misconception based on a small piece of information gathered from a so called whisteblower who probably has never worked for HMRC.
Anything to sell a story.
Pathetic
This website is Shite
in my opinion
had to see it before i believed it.
Go and get a life instead of wasting your time standing on your bloody soapbox preaching shit to the people who actually take the time to properly look into these matters and check if the claims made are in fact true.
The majority of people will absentmindedly believe the newspapers stories as they don't doubt that they would ever lie or mislead them. You are only adding to this and I imagine somewhere along the line YOU ARE MAKING A SNEAKY PROFIT.
HOW MUCH DO YOU CHARGE FOR COMPLETION OF A RETURN? OR FOR ANY OF YOUR SERVICES £500 £1000? £5000?
LETS BE HONEST, ITS NOT THAT HARD TO DO A LOT OF THE THINGS YOU CHARGE FOR AND YET THE PRICES YOU AND OTHER ACCOUNTANTS CHARGE FOR THESE SERVICES ARE ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING. BUT IM SURE THAT DOESN'T KEEP YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT. NOT WITH YOUR SILK BEDSHEETS.
ENJOY ROBBING PEOPLE FOR THE REST OF YOUR CAREER.
AN HONEST AND RESPONSIBLE TAXPAYER
I've said it time and time again. HMRC don't give a fuck about their taxpayers - they certainly don't give a fuck about us staff here.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason for the change is just another member of the management team trying to justify their existence or maybe just another attempt to set the staff up for more opportunities to get things wrong by making another change to the procedures.
ReplyDeleteI work in a contact centre on PAYE and SA and I've never been asked to keep people on the phone for longer than necessary. However, the way the management monitor statistics of call handling times, it is in the benefit of the advisor to have a longer call time than wrap (after call) time. Before this statistical was just about taking as many calls as possible so maybe thats why some people think HMRC are asking advisors to stay on the phone longer, but personally that hasn't been my experience.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a copy of the agreement with C&W could be obtained through the freedom of information act.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the areas where HMRC is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
ReplyDeleteIf they suddenly decided to make sure everyone had access to a local number, then this website would moan about people having to pay national call rates if (for example) their employers tax office is in Glasgow and they live in Nottingham.
Or if they said "here you go, here's an actual local number, phone it and we will connect you to the next available operator nationwide" then the website could attack the cost of the overheads that this would involved.
I realise that in the 'good old days' the tax office probably dealt with local employers but nowadays there is no such thing and that's hardly the fault of HMRC!