New handyvan arrives tomorrow. I call the insurance company I've been with for 8 years.
Simple task. Switch policy form old van to new van. Leave old van on policy till the end of the month.
How long could that possibly take?
52 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I have to ring HMRC tomorrow. I am pretty sure I am going to beat you by a factor of 3 at least!
I must be lucky - I rarely call HMRC, but I've always been answered promptly, and the quality of the help has been outstanding, getting things corrected instantly whilst I'm on the phone.
May need to call them again soon - a previous employer has just issued me with a P11D, long after I've done my tax return, and the only things on it shouldn't be on a P11D anyway (I didn't have any taxible benefits).
Fifty eight minutes holding for them a few months ago, muttered to the advisor and was advised to phone earlier in the day, or on a Saturday. That proved to be a bit shorter. YMMV... good luck!
Two letters going back four months. Unanswered so far - asking to confirm Mrs Pounder's tax code as to her pension. They are pure wankers.
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Yup. Recently tried to transfer my wife's tax allowance to me by registering on-line. At least an hour spent trying to get it to work (my mobile phone couldn't receive the code they kept sending me).
My wife rang them up - it took two minutes tops (we had our NI numbers handy because of the above).
Another Dave
You were lucky...
35 minutes waiting for an answer.Then failed the security check because some of our details were incorrect (that was the secondary purpose of the call, to verify an address).
And the dumb **** wouldn't let me have another go as I suspected which question was the failure. Said I had to call back and wait another 30 minutes. That resulted in some restrained (polite) but extremely righteous indignation being fed her way.
Next call
34 minutes - this lady was actually helpful. We prewarned her the details needed updating and guessed the wrong details correctly (old address[1])After that managed to update everything. Including the *material* change where I might owe them some money.
[1] We'd naively assumed that as our employers would have told HMRC our new address when we last moved, that all parts of HMRC would have that on our NI numbers. Wrongo....Apart from Self Assessment, the HMRC computers are a mess and the website stinks in terms of being able to do anything. You can't even register key details like addresses even if you have a Gov Gateway login. You think they could manage that. And they've closed all their offices so you can't even walk in with your papers and go through everything.
Then they wonder why people don't pay the right taxes...
You're lucky it's a straight switch: I just changed the car last week and before changing, did an online quote with my insurer (Direct Line), which showed the new car to be cheaper by ~20%. Comparable with, if a bit more than, the trend for a market comparison. When I called them up (4 months into the policy), they wanted the equivalent of the total price quoted online on top of the premium already paid for the remaining 8 months. They verified that my online quote was accurate, but couldn't match it for an existing policy, so suggested I cancelled and started a new policy. So much for rewarding customer loyalty! I took the first part of that advice, but saved another lump of cash by going elsewhere. A good half a day wasted there.
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