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AccountingWEB welcomes mysterious HMRC advisor

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16th Jan 2008
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Over the weekend, an anonymous HMRC advisor known only as “Chris” posted an entry on Any Answers. Entitled “Spare a thought for adviser’s at HMRC” (sic) Chris issued what was obviously a heartfelt plea for tolerance and patience in difficult times.

On Monday, AccountingWeb attempted to make contact, but we received no response. Yesterday, Chris deleted his entire posting, leaving only a trail of comments that ran the gamut of emotions from outright hostility to cautious sympathy to comradely solidarity.

Here is Chris’ original posting:

Spare a thought for adviser's at HMRC

My name is Chris and I'm an adviser at one of HMRC's taxes contact centres.

At this time of year, we love to help you, but please spare a thought for us when you call for information. I know that agents hate calling contact centres, but what would you do without us? You'd have no telephone number to call, so you'd have to write to us and your post would get stuck in a backlog!

We're inundated with thousands of calls every day, and to be honest it can become quite stressful at times. But that doesn't mean we don't want to help you! Please don't be angry if we ask to put you on hold. We are genuinely collating the information from your client's records to give you the information that you want.

This is my first and last post here. Sorry to trouble you.
Good luck with the deadline!

Chris :)
Anon

It was a rare flash of humanity from what can often otherwise be a faceless, bureaucratic behemoth. Come back, Chris!

Was it something we said? Leave a message - and read others' comments - for AccountingWEB's anonymous advisor here.

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By AnonymousUser
30th Jan 2008 17:25

HMRC staff are human (usually)
Calling any HMRC office is a hazardous business BUT we should all remember that the caller before us may have been abusive, rude, off-hand or [insert as appropriate]. It's hard to come back from that sufficinetly quickly to take the next call in the right frame of mind.
Treat someone like a human and they will, hopefully, respond in the same vein. What the officials can't do is say, "yes, I know my employer is absolutely - - - - at telling you what's going on, and they don't tell us either" because calls "may be monitored for training purposes". "Training purposes" is, in my humble opinion, a euphemism for "keeping an ear on what the staff are saying".

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By User deleted
17th Jan 2008 13:19

Oh dear!
You scared him off. He deleted his original post.

(in David Attenborough tones);

"See how aggresive the lesser spotted call centre employee can be (Lat: Revenuis Laccium), creating much mayhem amonst his species before retreating to the undergrowth/nearest pub".

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