Tried calling Centrelink lately and got a busy signal? You're not alone. More than 44 million calls to the welfare department were greeted with a busy signal in just ten months, government officials admitted.
In a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday night, staff from the Department of Human Services confirmed there were 44,044,206 "busy signals" between July 2016 and May 2017. That's nearly two calls for every Australian, more than 146,000 calls each day of the ten-month period.
"That's a long number," quipped Greens senator Rachel Siewert as DHS staff answered her questions.
Officials also revealed how actually getting your call engaged, and avoiding the dreaded engaged tone, was only half the battle. DHS staff outlined wait times to speak to Centrelink were frustratingly long, up to 38 minutes in the case of people trying to ring the participation hotline, confirming the frustrations of countless Australians who have struggled to get in contact with the agency.
As of April 30, the average wait time for calls to the disability, sickness and carer's line was 28 minutes; to the employment services line, 30 minutes; the families and parenting line, 16 minutes; older Australians, 18 minutes; and youth and students, 30 minutes.
The long wait time and huge numbers of failed calls back up claims from Centrelink clients about the difficulty in reaching the agency
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Possum; AKA:- Ali El-Aziz Mohamed Gundawiathan
Sent from my imperial66 typewriter using carrier pigeon, message sticks and smoke signals.
We're a welfare country it's no wonder there lines are too busy people that have worked all there lives deserve there pensions,but theres too many bludgers taking advantage of Centrelink ..
-- Edited by Ron-D on Tuesday 6th of June 2017 08:48:33 AM
Cost me $60 (prepaid mobile, in the middle of bluddy nowhere, no landlines to be had) to get our pay sorted out the other month. That was the hold - the problem was resolved in less than 30 seconds!
Just spent half an hour on hold to Medicare! And again, a quick solution.
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The Mobile Madhouse: me (Rosie), him (Troy), a kelpie, a kelpie-dingo, a husky & a rainbow lorikeet.
My favourite Telco (recently I was a bit silly and said they are improving) have billed me $339 odd dollars whilst overseas with daughters last week.
Getting ready for trip Telstra amalgamated my 3 devices into one account and one data pack and I followed their instructions to the letter and purchased a travel pass,,,, phone worked OK tablet useless as travel pass wouldn't work.
Billed more to phone Oz to try to fix,,, no joy.
Billed more to lodge complaint,,, failed to load on their website (billed as didn't like complaint on Wi-Fi to log into my account or similar)
Billed more to re-lodge complaint.
SOLUTION - WAIT TILL YOU GET BACK TO OZ AND BILL IS GENERATED
LODGED SECOND COMPLAINT ABOUT 1ST COMPLAINT NOT RECOGNISING I WAS OVERSEAS AND COULD'T USE TABLET TO FIND BUS ROUTES / TIMETABLES / STREETS / ETC ETC....... SOLUTION SAME AS FIRST WAIT????
End of rant.
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Why is it so? Professor Julius Sumner Miller, a profound influence on my life, who explained science to us on TV in the 60's.
Centrelink were about to overpay me,,,, so do the right thing,,, go in tell em I've got a "simple" problem.
Over 3/4 of an hour to fix (that's after the waiting),,, they are soooooo far behind in data processing and sytem is too complex IMHO. The woman had to get supervisor to fix.
No wonder people just accept overpayments,,,,,,
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Why is it so? Professor Julius Sumner Miller, a profound influence on my life, who explained science to us on TV in the 60's.
