Martin Lewis has taken to social media to issue a warning to Brits after around 20,000 people received the same eight-word message. The consumer champion who offers financial advice on programmes such as This Morning and Good Morning Britain as well as his own Martin Lewis Money Show took to X to explain his concerns.
He wrote: “Please report ‘sorry we are experiencing unusually high call volumes’ messages. We’ve had 20,000 reports in so far to test if some firms (banks, broadband, mobile, energy, water etc) have this for EVERY call. Pls take 30s to report it.”
He further explained: “The point of this is to see if they play the message consistently both through the day and over weeks. If they do then it is a LIE and may well breach consumer regulations, yet we need timed data to try and tie down who the most likely offenders are.”
Image: Martin Lewis
A supporter echoed Lewis’s sentiments, sharing their own frustrating experience: “Having recently dealt with the admin for my late father I can confirm Gov departments are awful at this. They pickup immediately but it’s often 30-60mins before you speak to someone. Calls are often randomly dropped or cut at 17:30. This is why UK has low productivity.”
Another frustrated customer shared their experience with Barclaycard: “Had a really bad experience with @Barclaycard recently, waited over an hour to report a lost card only to be cut off when I did get through to someone.”
While another social media commenter said they were on the phone for 90 minutes to another company. They said: “I had issues with @O2 rang one evening at 4:45, was on hold 1 hour 30 minutes to be told at 6pm that my call would not be answered before they close ans hung up! The department I wanted closed at 8pm! How does that even make any sense!”
