Birth, death, taxes – and now waiting on hold for the taxman – all the certainties of life..The average time a caller waits to talk to a live person at Revenue Canada is now almost half an hour, the longest period in history, says Blacklock’s Reporter..Some callers can wait hours to speak to a live agent..“Call handle time went up forty percent,” testified Frank Vermaeten, assistant revenue commissioner, to a Common’s committee..Vermaeten blamed complicated claims by tax filers regarding pandemic benefits, and appeals by victims of identity thieves..“A lot had to do with identity theft, with the increased sophistication of cyberattacks,” said Vermaeten..Conservative MP Raquel Dancho (Kildonan-St. Paul, Man.) told the committee that MPs have been flooded with complaints from constituents unable to reach tax agents..“We’re hearing from across the country many people are having issues,” said Dancho..“I’m sure everyone on this committee has probably had constituents complain about this issue. They are waiting three, four hours and then they get an operator saying, ‘Too busy, call back later,’ click, hang up, and then they have to start again.”.Vermaeten said the call waiting times are of “great concern..“Just to give you context, the call demand is just unprecedented. In a typical week we might receive at the same time last year 350,000 calls. This time we’re receiving over a million calls. The demand is just very large,” he said..“It is absolutely true there are some people waiting a very long time. The average wait time tends to be around 25 minutes, but of course it’s the outliers. It’s often when people need to speak to what we call a tier two or tier three agent, a specialist, that they have to wait this long. So, it’s very unfortunate.”.Vermaeten said the Agency hired and trained 2,000 new call centre agents this tax season..The Agency in a 2020 Inquiry Of Ministry tabled in the Commons said of an average 32 million callers who attempted to reach its call centre agents in a typical year, only 12.7 million were successful. About 3.3 million received a busy signal, while others resorted to an automated service..Callers spent an average nine minutes and 41 seconds on hold at the time, by official estimate..Shared Services Canada, the federal IT service, last May 25 said federal call centres improved their rate of dropped calls overall by not answering the phone..“There were problems with calls that weren’t dropped but simply never got answered,” Paul Glover, the president of Shared Services, told the Commons government operations committee..Dave Naylor is the News Editor of the Western Standard.dnaylor@westernstandardonline.com.Twitter.com/nobby7694
