What could you do in 26 minutes? Get lunch?
In 31 minutes: your shopping for week.
In 49 minutes: wash your car, walk the dog and get a cup of coffee..
What did we do in 26, 31 and 49 minutes? Not much because we were on hold. And sometimes on hold for much longer than that. Much longer.
Our undercover team called consumer lines at state agencies and offices.
But instead of getting help, we were often told to wait. And wait. And wait.
Patricia Smith wasn't part of our experiment. She really needed info from the Mass Registry of Motor Vehicles. First call: she waited 30 minutes and got no one. Tried again and waited an hour before she hung up. She finally: wrote a letter!
Patricia Smith"It's actually a disgrace for the state of Massachusetts. Anyone who had that kind of customer service would not be in business for more than a week."
Could the Registry hot line really be that slow? Yup. We called the main help line at all times of the day, our shortest wait was 18 minutes! The longest: 49!
And on the special line to check license suspensions, yikes. We waited 22 minutes, 37 minutes and then one hour and ten minutes. And then: one hour and forty two minutes. On Hold.
Hank Phillippi Ryan"How can that be?"
Rachel Kaprielian, Registrar, Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles
"That is clearly unacceptable and this is a big charge of the RMV to eliminate that kind of wait from ever happening again."
Problem is: the new registrar says, there are almost 3 million callers a year to the main line. Since only 38 people are answering the phones here, they're each trying to handle 300 calls a day.
Hank Phillippi Ryan "Now clearly this isn't working."
Rachel Kaprielian, Registrar, Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles "This is a staffing issue and that is an issue that the RMV is going to be dealing with in short order."
Hot lines can work! When we called the Boston Mayor's office, a real person answered right away. Same at the Department of Revenue, and the Governors office and at the MBTA.
MBTA supervisors told us: they listen in to make sure the system is working.
Carla Howze, MBTA, Director of the Customer Support Services Department"And sometimes they think it's me, sometimes it's not me, its other people. But yes, we do that quite frequently. "
But abandon hope if you need to call the state's unemployment division. We waited 26 minutes. Then 32 minutes, 35 minutes and sometimes the recorded message just told us to go away.
Unemployment officials would not talk to us on camera, but they explain there's a new unemployment law in effect and questions about it have overloaded their lines. How to get around this? Well, if you can use the web everyone told us they try to put all the info they can on line and hope you'll try there first.
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