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Download an app called WeQ4u .. it will change your life. Lmao.
Whilst on hold, you just press 9* and it disconnects your call, then calls you back when the operator picks up. The operator gets a automated message telling them to wait while your being reconnected.
You can also put any premium phone number in and it will convert it too a free phone number for you.
All for free.
Smashing app.
I'll take a look thanks. I am slightly hesitant as these are government calls I'm making at the moment, and NGL if i was on the other end and i heard that I would probs put the phone down
Former call centre agent.
We were always told to hang up for these because the time it takes for people to pick their phones back up (at the time) negatively impacted call times.
Could be much different now though!!
Used to work the phones in HMRC and we'd get those calls all the time. You'd hang on for a minute or two while the caller got back on the line, it was no bother at all.
Couldn't comment on app security - best speak with a I.T Gov. Specialist. My optimistic self would like to think it would work more times than not without malicious intent, but I can understand with the situation your hesitation!
So you're telling me I can call premium rate numbers for free with this app? I don't understand how that would work. Does it only work with queing systems? What about having to choose options before hitting the queue?
If you're not paying for the product then you are the product.
They've got to be scraping data from calls for them to have something to sell to fund all of this.
Making it yes, hosting it for everyone freely, no.
Again, if you're not paying for a product or service, you are the product. Anyone think Gmail is free because Google is kind, or because they reuse and/or resell your data?
No but I think SponsorBlock and the app I use for youtube are free for ideological reasons, and they're hosted freely. They accept donations but idk how many they recieve
Every premium number has an ordinary number attached. The app allows you to find the ordinary phone number and call that instead.
With the queuing, it's only prompt once you press the 9*, so you would complete all the menu like normal, press 9* when successfully in the queue.
I've saved over £40 a year! In premium calls.. cannot remember the minutes saved by not queuing but it's endless..
It's become a habit in my day to day and I'd say 1 put of 20 aren't connected when I get to the phone, but it's not sweat on me.. I'll just redial and use the app!
Obligatory- I swear, I do not work for the app haha. Just so happy to finally share.
I was with 3 when the pandemic started, and you'd be in a queue for over two hours to speak to the travel insurance company, and I would be cut off every time before I ever got to speak to someone.
I've also been with 3 for years and it would routinely cut me off at bang on 2 hours. My mum was the only person I ever was on the phone to for 2 hours though. I swapped to Vodafone (and I think she's on O2) and we can speak for over 2 hours now. Haven't hit whatever limit exists on these two yet.
Who knows then. As with every technical question on the internet, the answers are always "I have this problem also" and "I don't have this problem myself" 🤣
Nah you forgot the best one. You find someone with your EXACT problem, and then you see they edited the post to say "update: found the solution somewhere else, thanks all!" but doesn't say what the fix was or where they found it. And there you are on a 2 year old post wanting to reply to say GET BACK HERE AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF.
Not recently , no 🙏🏼.
An old flame and I would have really long calls every now and again, but then again come to think of it, I think there has been times we'd get disconnected randomly.
I am on o2 and speak to my mam most wed nights for 2.5 hours lol. Never had an issue. Even if she calls me and she is vodafone. Sounds like you ate making a wifi call which would explain this.
I would have thought that a Wifi call would allow you to make a longer call - since wifi calls are using the internet rather than the phone network? It'd make sense to cut off calls that are using the network off after a certain amount of time, but not Wifi. I'm curious to know what they meant now.
Imagine if every user started a call and then put their phone down and forgot. Their network could not handle the load. Thats why they cut off calls after a certain time
I was just guessing based off of science lol
But wouldn't surprise me if they did impose some sort of limit
I found out once that my "unlimited data" SIM I had wasn't actually unlimited. It was just some ridiculous number (like 1 million or billion (forgot which, was a lot of 0s though) GB) and a customer service rep once told me that "you're unlikely to ever actually use that many, so its functionally unlimited" and I so wanted to prove him wrong but I couldn't work out how one even goes about using all that data without a super computer or something
>Imagine if every user started a call and then put their phone down and forgot.
I can imagine that would be a problem. I can't imagine that problem ever materialising though
> I can imagine that would be a problem. I can't imagine that problem ever materialising though
Then you lack imagination.
Perhaps someone starts a call to see how long it lasts before the network cuts it off, they film it with another phone so we can see the call duration climbing ever-higher, then they put it on TikTok, and then everyone else does the same. *Now* it's a problem.
People are fucking idiots, they ate washing liquid pods.
They have to anticipate that people are idiots. They have to test things and build in limits and safeguards.
That sounds like a realistic situation to you? I mean of course it's *possible* but do you really think that several telecom companies have decided to impose a limit based on some hypothetical tictoc trend? Since when was that how business decisions are made.. you could say that about anything by the way.. why isn't Volkswagen glueing their bolts into place for thei car wheels in case there's some tictoc trend where kids go round unscrewing them for likes?
This is still a nonsensical hypothetical because it dodges around the question.
The limit isnt the problem, the short limit is the problem.
The limit could be six or 12 hours.
But even if there was no limit, the safeguard could be manual cutoff of long calls.
I understand why they would put such a restriction in place, but refusing to(or being unable to as they put it) to remove it at my request makes me want to leave this network. There have been other things as well, but this is one of the newest
> I understand why they would put such a restriction in place, but refusing to(or being unable to as they put it) to remove it at my request makes me want to leave this network.
I think you will find that every other network will be the same in this regard. It's there for a reason, which you acknowledge.
From what I can gather in these replies, there are some that have more than 2, and some that are almost 24. I was prepared for what you've said to be the answer, but I'm glad it doesn't appear to be this way. And if other people have come across the same issue maybe this thread will help them too :)
There are a lot of variables at play here. It's not even as simple as a single provider having a set cut-off time. If your provider cuts calls off at 6 hours, but the provider of the person or company you are dialling cuts theirs off at 2 hours, your call will drop at the 2 hour mark. Or maybe your provider and their provider don't have direct interconnects with each other, so your call has to go through an intermediate network whose policy is to cut calls off at 1 hour.
There are different criteria by which calls are terminated as well.
Some networks will maintain a call for 12 or even 24 hours provided (1) there's still regular signalling refreshes at each hop the call takes across each network and (2) there's still media (speech, bg noise) transmitted by both parties.
Some networks will set an arbitrary hard limit even if the call is still active in signalling.
Most networks will kill a call pretty quickly (usually up to 2 hours) if media transmission is no longer detected.
In just about every circumstance, these timeout limits are set at the network level and wouldn't be changed by the network operators without good reason (for example, Ofcom regulating a particular behaviour). There is essentially no circumstance where a single customer complaint will lead to network-wide changes.
It always used to be but I didn’t realise it still was. I suppose it limits your bill if you’ve accidentally dialled someone you didn’t mean to? I’m surprised we haven’t already seen spam/viruses that instruct your phone to ring a premium rate number. My Siri responds to many more people than just me!
They are not 'experiencing a higher than normal volume of calls right now'. They are experiencing a quite deliberate policy of not having enough staff to handle the calls.
I had COVID last month, it knocked me out for three weeks and I’m still sleeping loads and popping pain killers. I work in a chronically understaffed chain pharmacy, it slowed down your prescription turnaround.
Wouldn't be surprised if they ended up sacking the person/people who know how to change the message and now the message being like that is just a "happy little accident" for the company
Please remember to report them here:
[https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/report-high-call-volumes/](https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/report-high-call-volumes/)
This is not necessarily the case. My employer has been working very hard to recruit for calltaking roles. It’s not just a case of following a script and the job can be both a delight and really gruelling. Sometimes, wait times hit three hours. I suspect the courts service would need to ensure all its call handlers have appropriate vetting so there isn’t necessarily a large pool to draw from.
>This is not necessarily the case. My employer has been working very hard to recruit for calltaking roles.
If they can't find people, they likely need to be paying more. I could see why someone didn't want the abuse of a call centre for minimum wage.
Yes, there are exceptions, but people cost money, so a lot of companies are quite deliberately reducing their call centre staffing levels to try to drive people to use automated chatbots. I recently had to activate my power of attorney for my mother due to her failing health, and you want to know how many automated chatbots can deal with that query? None (although to be fair, some of the humans couldn't handle it either). It made an already stressful thing so much worse.
Actually this might be a reason why, have you tried calling without WiFi?
From memory the way WiFi calling works is to set up what's basically a VPN connection, depending on how it does that after a period of time this will get disconnected because routers don't really like long running connections. Two hours sounds like a potential connection time out to me.
(Explanation somewhat simplified because this isn't a networking sub)
Maybe. Same for Skype or any VoIP service.
At a technical level, no. All these are built to withstand some level of shoddy connection, ranging from bad WiFi to deliberate disconnects. They either use multiple "pipes" which can stand being reconnected (instead of a single long standing pipe which can't be) or communicate over a different style of connection which doesn't require a long standing "pipe". Think the difference between throwing tennis balls to a friend (no pipe) and rolling them down a tube to the friend (pipe). This is why sometimes you get a bad connection for a few moments and either the call "catches up" or quality breaks down.
So why maybe? It may not be in the interest of the company providing the service (Meta for WhatsApp, Microsoft for Skype, etc.). Possibly for cost reasons, possibly for social reasons, possibly that it's an anomaly in their usage patterns and anomalies are not supported because of some risk profile. They may not want a long call because it costs too much to run, they may not want a long call because there's an associated stalking or remote device risk, they may not want one because it takes one of their slots for shorter calls that make them more money.
Best answer? Try it and see.
I've had a Giffgaff SIM for donkeys years and found them to be good. Every so often I shop around and see that I could get a slightly better deal elsewhere but I've never been bothered to switch for the sake of saving £2 a month.
If you install Skype and get some credit they allow you to call landline and mobile numbers for 4 hours before been cut off it seems.
I remember dial-up ISP's such as NTL & Freeserve would cut you off after 2 hours back in the day. Honestly never knew this was a thing for mobile phones until now!
I've often made calls longer than 2 hours on Lebara, usually in similar circumstances to yourself - waiting in queues to talk to the initial call handler, then another queue to speak to the right department etc.
According to the Lebara terms of service, the maximum call length they allow is: 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. Although I've never been on a call that long to see if it's true.
I have tried something like that in the past, but been told that they can't make outgoing calls from that number. Though that was to a customer service number not a government entity.
May be partly true, I couldn't in one call centre but the main issue is it would affect their stats. It would be time off inbound calls and go against them.
I never had this issue with 3, I was long distance with my husband through covid and we'd be on the phone for 10 hours sometimes. You learn something new every day
It's weird that there doesn't seem to be a consensus. I wonder about time of day and day of the week etc. Of course most people will be making calls during the day and during the week, so perhaps they make these cut offs at that time. Who knows
I'm on 3 now in London and I can confirm that this is probably a thing. That OR, it's a thing for EE and not 3 and it's an issue with my friend's network and not mine. I speak to them every other day for over 2 hours and it always cuts off at 2 hours on the dot.
It isn’t the calls themselves but rather the underlying system for call holding and forwarding for queuing systems, depending on the queuing system you’ll be held in a queue line which will send reconnect SIP messages back to mobile provider if the connection messages are not received from the called line then the mobile network will assume the call has dropped and end the call. Used to work on the EE core network and this problem isn’t rare, best thing to do is to speak to your provider and them to speak to their call carrier.
I've done this, I have a case open with them for something else and they said it wasn't possible to remove it. I'm not 100% that is true, but either way that avenue is closed. you would have thought that every time i hear "your call is important to us, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can" that it would resend the message, or at least in this day and age do a connection check for exactly that reason
I would ask to speak to 2nd tech support as they will be able to speak to or at least raise a case to the backend team, sadly CS agents will just brush this off, raise a complaint if they don’t raise a case with the backend team. The audio isn’t connected to those messages, essentially there is a control plane used to manage the calls, an example when ending a phone call, your phones sends a signal using that control plane to end the call on the network, this is done within 500ms
It's done to "prevent" people having open lines permanently. Mind you, I presume the likes of the Uber drivers etc that I see perma-chatting with someone simply redial every two hours.
Wow, I'm like everyone here, really didn't know that was a thing. Have you tried calling your current operators help desk? Sorry if it's already mentioned, didn't read the whole thread, but at one time in the early 2000's I worked for a large mobile phone provider on the help desk, reason I mention it's there were a variety of options we could either toggle on/off or offer some way to adjust, although never heard specifically of a call time limit, the were ways you could adjust the number of rings before a call could go to voice mail for instance, there were actually a wide range of network codes you could look up your self online, loads of *#xxx#*x etc codes.
I am talking to the staff about a separate issue, which they are dragging their heels in solving so i brought it up to the rep I'm speaking to, and he said it wasn't possible to remove it. :(
It also annoys me to no end. Not too much hassle when I’m talking to a friend and we get cut off. We just call back and make a joke about how we’ve been talking for two hours again. But I’ve also had the issue you have where I’ve been on hold for so fucking long I get cut off before I can even finish!! It’s bs I don’t even know why the limit exists. Instead it could prompt something like “press 1 to continue with the call” instead of just cutting you off.
Someone else pointed it out as well, I'll take a look but I'm slightly worried about using it with government numbers, in queues for things like courts or the police. I'll be taking a look, thanks.
No one will recall Mercury 121 having to limit calls to 30 minutes in the evenings because people were using the phones as baby monitors...
Mercury became T-Mobile became EE...
At one of my old jobs it was actually the system that handled our incoming calls that had a cutoff set, rather than the phone providers of the people calling in. I know this for definite as it was initially 1 hour and they increased the limit to 2 hours after a lot of complaints.
Some networks used to start charging you after 1 hour or 2 hours or whatever, but the dropping calls is newish. Probably because someone in the media got hold of grannies being charged when they forgot to hang up.
Try Zen Digital Voice. No mention of a cut-off (to avoid unexpected charges for pocket dialling?) instead it is limited to 1000 min a month. At least that is my understanding of my phone package with FTTP.
Giffgaff I used to have 6+ hr calls with my partner during lockdown, it never cut off once
It’s sim only not a contract though (if you don’t mind having just a sim)
Fully aware of that but it’s a general recommendation for calling any call centres. I used to work in one and we always had a lower headcount those days but people were more likely to call because they too might be off
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Online says sky have a 3 hour limit? Better than 2 at least. I have never known this was a thing till now
I had no idea this was a thing either
I will take a look, I hadn't thought to check sky.
Download an app called WeQ4u .. it will change your life. Lmao. Whilst on hold, you just press 9* and it disconnects your call, then calls you back when the operator picks up. The operator gets a automated message telling them to wait while your being reconnected. You can also put any premium phone number in and it will convert it too a free phone number for you. All for free. Smashing app.
I'll take a look thanks. I am slightly hesitant as these are government calls I'm making at the moment, and NGL if i was on the other end and i heard that I would probs put the phone down
I have a friend whonused to work in a call center - they said that it was quite common to get the “we queue for you - connecting you now”
Yes we got those all the time, just waited a couple of seconds for the to pick up. no bother.
Former call centre agent. We were always told to hang up for these because the time it takes for people to pick their phones back up (at the time) negatively impacted call times. Could be much different now though!!
Used to work the phones in HMRC and we'd get those calls all the time. You'd hang on for a minute or two while the caller got back on the line, it was no bother at all.
Couldn't comment on app security - best speak with a I.T Gov. Specialist. My optimistic self would like to think it would work more times than not without malicious intent, but I can understand with the situation your hesitation!
So you're telling me I can call premium rate numbers for free with this app? I don't understand how that would work. Does it only work with queing systems? What about having to choose options before hitting the queue?
If you're not paying for the product then you are the product. They've got to be scraping data from calls for them to have something to sell to fund all of this.
Agree. For every ‘this is amazing and free!’ The first question is; how are they making money then? People don’t make these things as volunteer work.
Sometimes they do. Plenty of free open source software out there that people make because it's something they feel is needed
Making it yes, hosting it for everyone freely, no. Again, if you're not paying for a product or service, you are the product. Anyone think Gmail is free because Google is kind, or because they reuse and/or resell your data?
No but I think SponsorBlock and the app I use for youtube are free for ideological reasons, and they're hosted freely. They accept donations but idk how many they recieve
Every premium number has an ordinary number attached. The app allows you to find the ordinary phone number and call that instead. With the queuing, it's only prompt once you press the 9*, so you would complete all the menu like normal, press 9* when successfully in the queue.
My Google assistant does this, I've only used it a couple of times but it seems to work
I've saved over £40 a year! In premium calls.. cannot remember the minutes saved by not queuing but it's endless.. It's become a habit in my day to day and I'd say 1 put of 20 aren't connected when I get to the phone, but it's not sweat on me.. I'll just redial and use the app! Obligatory- I swear, I do not work for the app haha. Just so happy to finally share.
Wait what? Is this really a thing?
Yep, though i don't understand how in this day and age, certainly is for 3, EE, o2, vodafone and ID mobile
I've been with 3 for years, and made many calls over 2 hours long though 🤷♂️
I was with 3 when the pandemic started, and you'd be in a queue for over two hours to speak to the travel insurance company, and I would be cut off every time before I ever got to speak to someone.
That's most likely because travel insurance companies aren't generally renowned for wanting to speak to anybody 😋
I've also been with 3 for years and it would routinely cut me off at bang on 2 hours. My mum was the only person I ever was on the phone to for 2 hours though. I swapped to Vodafone (and I think she's on O2) and we can speak for over 2 hours now. Haven't hit whatever limit exists on these two yet.
Who knows then. As with every technical question on the internet, the answers are always "I have this problem also" and "I don't have this problem myself" 🤣
Nah you forgot the best one. You find someone with your EXACT problem, and then you see they edited the post to say "update: found the solution somewhere else, thanks all!" but doesn't say what the fix was or where they found it. And there you are on a 2 year old post wanting to reply to say GET BACK HERE AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF.
Haha oh god yeah!! Man, the internet is 99% useless for answers, despite the amount of "information" =/= knowledge lol!
Have you done it recently? Cuts off for me and I ring my mate up every other day and it's been doing it to us constantly.
Not recently , no 🙏🏼. An old flame and I would have really long calls every now and again, but then again come to think of it, I think there has been times we'd get disconnected randomly.
I am on o2 and speak to my mam most wed nights for 2.5 hours lol. Never had an issue. Even if she calls me and she is vodafone. Sounds like you ate making a wifi call which would explain this.
Why would it being a wifi call explain this? thanks
I would have thought that a Wifi call would allow you to make a longer call - since wifi calls are using the internet rather than the phone network? It'd make sense to cut off calls that are using the network off after a certain amount of time, but not Wifi. I'm curious to know what they meant now.
Imagine if every user started a call and then put their phone down and forgot. Their network could not handle the load. Thats why they cut off calls after a certain time
Imagine paying for an unlimited phone contact that you have to redial every two hours!
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I wonder how many minutes they would class as too many. I’m going to check my contract now.
There's only about 44,000 minutes in a month So my guess is 45,000 is probably too many
I’m with id mobile. I can’t find anything about a limit. Don’t really want to test it!
I was just guessing based off of science lol But wouldn't surprise me if they did impose some sort of limit I found out once that my "unlimited data" SIM I had wasn't actually unlimited. It was just some ridiculous number (like 1 million or billion (forgot which, was a lot of 0s though) GB) and a customer service rep once told me that "you're unlikely to ever actually use that many, so its functionally unlimited" and I so wanted to prove him wrong but I couldn't work out how one even goes about using all that data without a super computer or something
We have an unlimited sim 4g router. We use about 500 gigs a month. Would be shit if they capped it, we can’t get landline!
>Imagine if every user started a call and then put their phone down and forgot. I can imagine that would be a problem. I can't imagine that problem ever materialising though
> I can imagine that would be a problem. I can't imagine that problem ever materialising though Then you lack imagination. Perhaps someone starts a call to see how long it lasts before the network cuts it off, they film it with another phone so we can see the call duration climbing ever-higher, then they put it on TikTok, and then everyone else does the same. *Now* it's a problem. People are fucking idiots, they ate washing liquid pods. They have to anticipate that people are idiots. They have to test things and build in limits and safeguards.
That sounds like a realistic situation to you? I mean of course it's *possible* but do you really think that several telecom companies have decided to impose a limit based on some hypothetical tictoc trend? Since when was that how business decisions are made.. you could say that about anything by the way.. why isn't Volkswagen glueing their bolts into place for thei car wheels in case there's some tictoc trend where kids go round unscrewing them for likes?
I mean, that does sound like an absolute riot. The kids are going to lap it up.
This is still a nonsensical hypothetical because it dodges around the question. The limit isnt the problem, the short limit is the problem. The limit could be six or 12 hours. But even if there was no limit, the safeguard could be manual cutoff of long calls.
"Please press star or your call will be disconnected" Problem solved
I understand why they would put such a restriction in place, but refusing to(or being unable to as they put it) to remove it at my request makes me want to leave this network. There have been other things as well, but this is one of the newest
> I understand why they would put such a restriction in place, but refusing to(or being unable to as they put it) to remove it at my request makes me want to leave this network. I think you will find that every other network will be the same in this regard. It's there for a reason, which you acknowledge.
From what I can gather in these replies, there are some that have more than 2, and some that are almost 24. I was prepared for what you've said to be the answer, but I'm glad it doesn't appear to be this way. And if other people have come across the same issue maybe this thread will help them too :)
There are a lot of variables at play here. It's not even as simple as a single provider having a set cut-off time. If your provider cuts calls off at 6 hours, but the provider of the person or company you are dialling cuts theirs off at 2 hours, your call will drop at the 2 hour mark. Or maybe your provider and their provider don't have direct interconnects with each other, so your call has to go through an intermediate network whose policy is to cut calls off at 1 hour. There are different criteria by which calls are terminated as well. Some networks will maintain a call for 12 or even 24 hours provided (1) there's still regular signalling refreshes at each hop the call takes across each network and (2) there's still media (speech, bg noise) transmitted by both parties. Some networks will set an arbitrary hard limit even if the call is still active in signalling. Most networks will kill a call pretty quickly (usually up to 2 hours) if media transmission is no longer detected. In just about every circumstance, these timeout limits are set at the network level and wouldn't be changed by the network operators without good reason (for example, Ofcom regulating a particular behaviour). There is essentially no circumstance where a single customer complaint will lead to network-wide changes.
Imagine this totally made up scenario that I have in my head. How crazy would that be!
Well I never.
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I have unlimited minutes myself, as do others that I've read posts from. :(
You'd mobile what?
https://preview.redd.it/zw6tu0gjcdzc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44bb452629fb1b239df633163cb2bce436a046f6
It always used to be but I didn’t realise it still was. I suppose it limits your bill if you’ve accidentally dialled someone you didn’t mean to? I’m surprised we haven’t already seen spam/viruses that instruct your phone to ring a premium rate number. My Siri responds to many more people than just me!
They are not 'experiencing a higher than normal volume of calls right now'. They are experiencing a quite deliberate policy of not having enough staff to handle the calls.
I made a call just last week where the automated message still tried to blame covid for the waiting times! Fuckheads.
My gp still blames covid for longer prescription turnarounds.
I had COVID last month, it knocked me out for three weeks and I’m still sleeping loads and popping pain killers. I work in a chronically understaffed chain pharmacy, it slowed down your prescription turnaround.
The chronically understaffed pharmacy slowed it down, most businesses have contingency for covering sick and annual leave.
Wouldn't be surprised if they ended up sacking the person/people who know how to change the message and now the message being like that is just a "happy little accident" for the company
Please remember to report them here: [https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/report-high-call-volumes/](https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/report-high-call-volumes/)
This is not necessarily the case. My employer has been working very hard to recruit for calltaking roles. It’s not just a case of following a script and the job can be both a delight and really gruelling. Sometimes, wait times hit three hours. I suspect the courts service would need to ensure all its call handlers have appropriate vetting so there isn’t necessarily a large pool to draw from.
>This is not necessarily the case. My employer has been working very hard to recruit for calltaking roles. If they can't find people, they likely need to be paying more. I could see why someone didn't want the abuse of a call centre for minimum wage.
This is true. However, I’m paid a lot more than minimum wage.
Yes, there are exceptions, but people cost money, so a lot of companies are quite deliberately reducing their call centre staffing levels to try to drive people to use automated chatbots. I recently had to activate my power of attorney for my mother due to her failing health, and you want to know how many automated chatbots can deal with that query? None (although to be fair, some of the humans couldn't handle it either). It made an already stressful thing so much worse.
Indeed. Hence the fourth word of my response to you.
Not heard of this before. Does it still cut off if you make the call over WiFi?
I'm calling through wifi calling all the time when I'm at home or in the office. Today I've been at home. So yes it does!
Actually this might be a reason why, have you tried calling without WiFi? From memory the way WiFi calling works is to set up what's basically a VPN connection, depending on how it does that after a period of time this will get disconnected because routers don't really like long running connections. Two hours sounds like a potential connection time out to me. (Explanation somewhat simplified because this isn't a networking sub)
For my second call today I did exactly that, after i made this post! Same result unfortunately
That at least makes it pretty much definitely the phone provider.
Someone further down asked about WhatsApp calling, would this have the same issue you describe here? thanks
Maybe. Same for Skype or any VoIP service. At a technical level, no. All these are built to withstand some level of shoddy connection, ranging from bad WiFi to deliberate disconnects. They either use multiple "pipes" which can stand being reconnected (instead of a single long standing pipe which can't be) or communicate over a different style of connection which doesn't require a long standing "pipe". Think the difference between throwing tennis balls to a friend (no pipe) and rolling them down a tube to the friend (pipe). This is why sometimes you get a bad connection for a few moments and either the call "catches up" or quality breaks down. So why maybe? It may not be in the interest of the company providing the service (Meta for WhatsApp, Microsoft for Skype, etc.). Possibly for cost reasons, possibly for social reasons, possibly that it's an anomaly in their usage patterns and anomalies are not supported because of some risk profile. They may not want a long call because it costs too much to run, they may not want a long call because there's an associated stalking or remote device risk, they may not want one because it takes one of their slots for shorter calls that make them more money. Best answer? Try it and see.
Can you not call using VOIP via Teams?
I've never had that issue with giffgaff?
came here to say this, I've done some pretty long calls in the past (4-5 hours+) and never even knew there was a limit?
Have you made any calls over 2 hours? I will take a look at them, I'd forgotten about their existance
I've used giffgaff for very long calls (3hrs+) sorting out some things for a disabled relative. The DWP doesn't answer quickly!
Their ts&cs say maximum call length is 9 hours.
WELL that is certainly worth looking into, not that I would ever need 9 hours, but it would remove any issues on my end.
I was on the phone for three ish hours a few times?
I've had a Giffgaff SIM for donkeys years and found them to be good. Every so often I shop around and see that I could get a slightly better deal elsewhere but I've never been bothered to switch for the sake of saving £2 a month.
If you install Skype and get some credit they allow you to call landline and mobile numbers for 4 hours before been cut off it seems. I remember dial-up ISP's such as NTL & Freeserve would cut you off after 2 hours back in the day. Honestly never knew this was a thing for mobile phones until now!
That seems like overkill just to make a simple call. But i will consider it. Thank you
How is downloading an app overkill when the alternative is getting a SIM card
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I've often made calls longer than 2 hours on Lebara, usually in similar circumstances to yourself - waiting in queues to talk to the initial call handler, then another queue to speak to the right department etc. According to the Lebara terms of service, the maximum call length they allow is: 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. Although I've never been on a call that long to see if it's true.
Lebara, came up as the cheapest sim only for my needs so if this is also the case then i may have found a new home. thank you.
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And you get told "lol no" Clearly if wait time is 90 mins customer service isn't something they are bothered about.
I have tried something like that in the past, but been told that they can't make outgoing calls from that number. Though that was to a customer service number not a government entity.
May be partly true, I couldn't in one call centre but the main issue is it would affect their stats. It would be time off inbound calls and go against them.
I never had this issue with 3, I was long distance with my husband through covid and we'd be on the phone for 10 hours sometimes. You learn something new every day
It's weird that there doesn't seem to be a consensus. I wonder about time of day and day of the week etc. Of course most people will be making calls during the day and during the week, so perhaps they make these cut offs at that time. Who knows
Really inconvenient especially in your situation. I hope you figure it out.
I'm on 3 now in London and I can confirm that this is probably a thing. That OR, it's a thing for EE and not 3 and it's an issue with my friend's network and not mine. I speak to them every other day for over 2 hours and it always cuts off at 2 hours on the dot.
Try voice calling with WhatsApp
I'm not sure i can do that to a government number, but that is worth a look. though for other reasons I am also looking to switch networks. thanks
You can call any number through WhatsApp, even without adding them as a contact
Interesting, I'll take a look. of course its a long time to wait and find out but worth a go
Isn't that limited to an hour on WhatsApp?
It isn’t the calls themselves but rather the underlying system for call holding and forwarding for queuing systems, depending on the queuing system you’ll be held in a queue line which will send reconnect SIP messages back to mobile provider if the connection messages are not received from the called line then the mobile network will assume the call has dropped and end the call. Used to work on the EE core network and this problem isn’t rare, best thing to do is to speak to your provider and them to speak to their call carrier.
I've done this, I have a case open with them for something else and they said it wasn't possible to remove it. I'm not 100% that is true, but either way that avenue is closed. you would have thought that every time i hear "your call is important to us, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can" that it would resend the message, or at least in this day and age do a connection check for exactly that reason
I would ask to speak to 2nd tech support as they will be able to speak to or at least raise a case to the backend team, sadly CS agents will just brush this off, raise a complaint if they don’t raise a case with the backend team. The audio isn’t connected to those messages, essentially there is a control plane used to manage the calls, an example when ending a phone call, your phones sends a signal using that control plane to end the call on the network, this is done within 500ms
Sadly, this guy is already that guy. but I appreciate it
TIL calls were limited, I imagined it I ever wanted to cal anyone that I could talk to them for an infinite time period.
It's done to "prevent" people having open lines permanently. Mind you, I presume the likes of the Uber drivers etc that I see perma-chatting with someone simply redial every two hours.
And to prevent them profiting from cash for minutes scams
Wow, I'm like everyone here, really didn't know that was a thing. Have you tried calling your current operators help desk? Sorry if it's already mentioned, didn't read the whole thread, but at one time in the early 2000's I worked for a large mobile phone provider on the help desk, reason I mention it's there were a variety of options we could either toggle on/off or offer some way to adjust, although never heard specifically of a call time limit, the were ways you could adjust the number of rings before a call could go to voice mail for instance, there were actually a wide range of network codes you could look up your self online, loads of *#xxx#*x etc codes.
I am talking to the staff about a separate issue, which they are dragging their heels in solving so i brought it up to the rep I'm speaking to, and he said it wasn't possible to remove it. :(
Giffgaff apparently limits calls to 9 hours.
When unlimited minutes first came in, the reason for the 'limit' was to stop people using it as a remote baby monitor.
It also annoys me to no end. Not too much hassle when I’m talking to a friend and we get cut off. We just call back and make a joke about how we’ve been talking for two hours again. But I’ve also had the issue you have where I’ve been on hold for so fucking long I get cut off before I can even finish!! It’s bs I don’t even know why the limit exists. Instead it could prompt something like “press 1 to continue with the call” instead of just cutting you off.
Try WiFi calling.
I already use wifi calling when I'm at home, as I have been today.
Have you tried Skype?
Is Skype still a thing?
Just, but yes.
I have not, another user pointed that out as well. It's on the list to look into. thanks
I've done 8+ hour calls with 3
See while over here they cut me off at 2 hours on the dot every time
WeQ4U?
Someone else pointed it out as well, I'll take a look but I'm slightly worried about using it with government numbers, in queues for things like courts or the police. I'll be taking a look, thanks.
I agree about your reservations completely; just something to look into.
No one will recall Mercury 121 having to limit calls to 30 minutes in the evenings because people were using the phones as baby monitors... Mercury became T-Mobile became EE...
At one of my old jobs it was actually the system that handled our incoming calls that had a cutoff set, rather than the phone providers of the people calling in. I know this for definite as it was initially 1 hour and they increased the limit to 2 hours after a lot of complaints.
Some networks used to start charging you after 1 hour or 2 hours or whatever, but the dropping calls is newish. Probably because someone in the media got hold of grannies being charged when they forgot to hang up.
Try Zen Digital Voice. No mention of a cut-off (to avoid unexpected charges for pocket dialling?) instead it is limited to 1000 min a month. At least that is my understanding of my phone package with FTTP.
02 here, had many 4-5 hour calls during covid, no problems
I have unlimited minutes on O2 and have made calls over 2 hours without being cut off.
Giffgaff maximum is 9 hours
Giffgaff I used to have 6+ hr calls with my partner during lockdown, it never cut off once It’s sim only not a contract though (if you don’t mind having just a sim)
It’s best not to call on Mondays or Fridays as people are more likely to be off
It's Wednesday my dude AHGGHGHHHHHGHHHHH
Fully aware of that but it’s a general recommendation for calling any call centres. I used to work in one and we always had a lower headcount those days but people were more likely to call because they too might be off
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