How long would you wait on hold with a prospective vendor?

SenseiSteve

SenseiSteve

HD Moderator
Staff member
Yipes! I've been on hold for 39 minutes and 19 seconds so far waiting for someone in sales at a prospective vendor to answer their phone. I have it on speaker and have been listening to the same obnoxious musical tone and "Please wait while I try to connect you" over and over.

How long would you stay on hold to ask a pre-sales question before you moved on to their competition?
 
Woh man, you are a trooper. I have no patience at all with being on hold, unless it's an emergency or I'm really pissed off.
 
Well, I'm at 46 minutes now ... I'm afraid this tune is going to get implanted in my brain and I'm going to hear it in my sleep tonight.
Update - now at one hour and one minute - time to call it quits and go to lunch.
 
Last edited:
Wow, they called while I was gone .. at 1:30PM CST. No apologies for the long wait. Just the same phone number to call back.
 
Actually, this time they answered in under five minutes. Too late though ... I had already searched and found a free solution. No sale for them.
 
That depends on how much time I have. If I am working and the phone is just "working" on the background, I don't mind waiting for up to an hour. Usually that never happens though.

Also, you have to take into account how important that issue is and whether you can call back later. I find I have that choice most of the time.
 
10 minutes on hold is excessive (with nobody coming back to the line to say I'm sorry). When I worked at a hotel, our phones re-rang in 60 seconds if it was not addressed. The maximum we could put someone on hold was 3 minutes, any longer than that and we had a policy to get their number and call back (or see if they wanted to wait it out). MOST times they gave us a number. It was required (again) that they received a call back within 15 minutes.

If someone is wanting to make a sale to you, you HAVE to answer the phone (if you provide that medium). It's as bad as walking into a store, standing at the cash register and nobody showing up to take your money (been there, done that, and walked out).

The only time I wait on hold these days is if it's a billing issue in which they overcharged me or undercharged etc. There's too much competition for EVERYTHING - the longer they wait, the more options I have, especially if I have google in front of me!
 
Usually the reason for calling and the mood its placed me in will dictate the time I’ll hold for, usually between 30/40 mins however Dell recently would possibly lead my table with 50 mins for a basic enquiry and 90 mins ( 1h 30) for a sales call to our corresponding dell business rep.

On a flip side O2 have been the best phone based support I’ve dealt with very responsive and use many of the techniques or polices outlines by Conor. :)
 
if i have a query regarding sales than I wouldn't wait for more than 3 mins but if the I have a support query than i can hold upto 10 mins.
 
godaddy.com by fair has been the longest I have ever waited for and paypal was the shortest. Honestly if they cant connect me in 10mins or atleast till me how long the wait is I'm not going to be much happier
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Supporters

Back
Top