This petition was submitted during the 2019 to 2024 Parliament
Rejected petition Enforce organisations using automated telephones to announce waiting times.
Rejected on
Stop organisations imposing impossibly long telephone wait times without telling callers how long the wait will be, or offering an alternative human contact. Legally oblige all organisations to announce email and postal addresses for alternative human contact.
Most government and businesses are now employing Internet 'solutions' and automated telephone answering to reduce the staffing overhead. When the automated part works, it is often fine. However, in many cases a human contact is needed, and wait times to be answered can easily be in the order of hours. It is wrong to make people wait longer than a few minutes without telling them how long they must wait.
The simple answer is to legally require organisations to offer a return telephone call after (say) 10 minutes wait time and to announce wait times regularly if the offer is not accepted. This can all be done automatically.
Why was this petition rejected?
It’s about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not directly responsible for.
The Government is not responsible for the systems organisations put in place to manage incoming phone calls. This is a matter for individual organisations.
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.