Call centres use pandemic as an excuse for leaving us on hold
The amount of time broadband and landline customers spent waiting for customer service queries to be answered doubled in 2020
7 May 2021 • 4:39pm
Call centres have used the pandemic as an excuse to leave customers waiting on the phone for double the amount of time they did in 2019, figures from Ofcom suggested.
The telecoms regulator said the average wait for broadband customers looking to contact their providers had risen from just over two minutes in 2019 to just over four last year and that firms needed to do better.
Many providers found their customer service operations disrupted at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak as they had to adapt to having call centre staff working from home.
There were more than 25,000 complaints about packaged bank accounts last year as Britons were left with monthly fees for perks rendered useless by the pandemic.
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Percussionist Fang Zhang, the BBC Young Musician winner (photo: Fabio De Paola/ PA Wire) Register now to continue reading Thank you for visiting Gramophone and making use of our archive of more than 50,000 expert reviews, features, awards and blog articles. Why not register today and enjoy the following great benefits:
Free access to 5 subscriber-only reviews per month Unlimited access to news, features, blogs, awards and artist content
Last modified on Mon 3 May 2021 06.58 EDT
A 17-year-old percussionist has been crowned BBC’s Young Musician 2020. Fang Zhang, born in China’s Henan province and a recent student of Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, was revealed as the winner of the competition’s grand final on Sunday 2 May, following its broadcast on BBC Four and BBC Radio 3.
The final of the biennial competition was delayed by a year because of the pandemic, and was filmed without an audience at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on 25 April. Three finalists each played a concerto with the BBC Philharmonic under conductor Mark Wigglesworth; competing alongside Fang Zhang were 18-year-old French horn player Annemarie Federle and 19-year-old oboist Ewan Millar.
67-69 Victoria Road Rodbourne Cheney: Rodbourne Cheney Primary School’s parent organisation, the White Horse Federation, will be allowed to knock down a lean-to canopy and two portable toilets next to the sports equipment store on its playing field, and in their place put a new prefabricated block of four lavatories, individual cubicles with handbasins, all plumbed into the mains drainage. The playing field is a few minutes’ walk from the main school building in The Broadway. Eldene: A plan to knock down a bungalow and its garage could be knocked down to make space for two semi-detached houses on the corner of Elmore and Eldene Drive has been approved.