Originally Posted by BBC Watchdog

Hanging on the telephone
We made one hundred calls to each company, phoning their main customer service line at different times of the day, over a three-day period. We timed each phone call, from the moment we finished dialling, to when we first heard a human voice. All in all, we made 500 calls.

On average, the companies answered in less than three and half minutes. The fastest by far was Three, with an average of just one minute, 39 seconds before we got through to someone. The quickest single call of all was to Vodafone: they put us through to a human in 50 seconds flat.

BT and Sky were the two companies that kept us waiting the longest. On one call, BT took 24 minutes and 47 seconds to connect us to a human; Our longest single wait of all was to Sky who took even longer at 29 minutes and 33 seconds and then cut us off.


On hold for two hours
Sky cut us off so often, we wondered if they were just having a bad day. A few days later we called them again one extra time just to be sure. On call number 101, Sky blew all previous records out of the water. They kept us on hold for a marathon two hours and ten minutes. We could have gone to the movies in that time. We asked you what you thought of the amount of time Sky kept us on hold;

One man said: "I can't believe you were on the phone for two hours man. I don't know what sort of company would let you wait for two hours and if they are even worth letting you wait for two hours to be honest. I would have put the phone down."