Furious customers have been flooding social media with complaints after HMRC phone lines went down.
HMRC decided to take its phone lines down last Thursday because of ongoing technical issues, but have said that the lines would reopen in stages on Monday. However that hasn't stopped angry people - including parents who were worried about their tax credits payments - taking to Twitter to complain that they were unable to speak to someone at the department to deal with their concerns.
HMRC said on Twitter on Monday: "Our helplines are all open and taking calls. Our online services are working well and we encourage people to use them," but customers disagreed, complaining about the length of time that had been kept waiting on the line. Later in the afternoon, HMRC advised: "The phone lines are very busy at the moment. It might be best to leave it for a couple of days before trying them again. Normally the lines are less busy in the mornings before 10am."
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@callumdonnelly asked: "Any suggestions on how I can get hold of someone without waiting on hold for hours?" while @wrighty1973 also enquired: "Any chance answering the phone please? 42 mins and counting."
@ririglasgow stormed: "The woman has just hung up on me before I could give my details! I can not wait another hour to get through again, this is so bad ! Nearly four hours and you hang up!"
An HMRC spokesperson told The Sun : "Having worked on the technical problem over the weekend, we are opening our phone lines in stages this morning and will continue to monitor them."
HMRC took the decision to close its phone lines last last week and said it was urgently working to resolve the technical issue, apologising to people affected. Services taken down included the tax credit hotline as well as the numbers used for those who need advice filling in their tax returns.
@MissCherryFox took to Twitter to ask: "My CTC (child tax credit) hasn’t been paid today but your phone lines aren’t available to speak to someone about it - what am I supposed to do??"
@WayneMundon1975 said: "I'm desperate to speak to someone, how long are the technical issues going to last?" coming back later to say: "Four times now I have waited between 6-10 minutes for someone to answer, when they have and I give my NI number it disconnects. My anxiety is going through the roof here."
@Abbydonaldson93 also told of her nightmare trying to resolve her tax credits problem, saying: "I’m trying to call in regards to my tax credits but you’re phone lines are down! Do you have another way of contacting you? Can I chat with someone online or something? Absolute nightmare."
Harriett Baldwin MP, chair of the Government's Treasury Committee, last week asked for urgent answers on the HMRC customer service outage, saying: “It is seriously concerning to see taxpayers are currently unable to reach the taxman by telephone. These unexpected outages should be a thing of the past”
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