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HMRC does customer service U-turn

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25th Jun 2015
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HMRC has announced today that it is allocating £45m to improve customer service, as it released statistics  indicating a prolonged decline in the quality of its call handling.

The allocation will pay for around 3,000 additional staff to join customer service teams, alongside around 2,000 staff who are being moved over from other parts of HMRC to help with the tax credits deadline and letters and forms.

HMRC stats show that the Revenue received more than 64 million calls between February, 2014 and March 2015. The volume noticeably peaked around key dates such as 31 January for self-assessment, and the 31 July tax credit renewal deadline.

Perhaps confirming what many AccountingWEB members have been saying for a while, there’s been a steep drop off in the number of calls answered. January this year saw only 65.4% calls answered, well short of the HMRC’s 80% target. The figures show that in some months as many as one in three customers could not get through.

In a statement, Lin Homer said, “Despite our best efforts, our call performance hasn’t been up to scratch and we apologise to all those customers who have struggled to get through to us.

“Good customer service is an absolute priority for HMRC. We set ourselves the target to answer 80 per cent of calls, to provide a more consistent level of service across the year and to reduce peaks and troughs in service levels between busy and quieter times.”

Homer also added that HMRC have invested in new telephone equipment, which will allow them to “switch calls to many more offices, not just take them in contact centres, so more of our staff can help customers at the busiest times”.

What do you think? Welcome relief? Let us know.

Replies (47)

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Francois
By Francois Badenhorst
25th Jun 2015 15:32

For any and all interested, here's the stats straight from HMRC:

 

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By Jekyll and Hyde
25th Jun 2015 16:09

A welcome announcement

I welcome this announcement as well as the announcement recently about penalties. I hope that we are starting to see a trend of being more friendly and this extends to agents.

 

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By Charlie Carne
25th Jun 2015 16:18

Agent Dedicated Lines

Good news, but I'd like to see a small part of that £45m spent on adding Agent Dedicated Lines for CT, VAT and PAYE, to match the successful ADL for SA.

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blue sheep
By NH
25th Jun 2015 17:58

what about letters?

I recently had a reply to a letter to the employers section, 3 months after I had sent it, there are others I have just had no reply to.

Clearly the customer service in this area is severely lacking.

And to have a target to answer the phone only 80% of the time is surely not acceptable.

I also wonder what the stats are for those calls that are marked as answered but only after the customer has been holding on for 45 minutes.

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Replying to User deleted:
By taxbakbristol
26th Jun 2015 13:39

`Employers Section Delays

They are gradually getting slower and slower .Soon I expect a gridlock at Long Benton for both the Employers Section and the CAA Team.

I have 64-8s were I have made 3 requests - one paper and two on line but after 4 months they are still not listed on my client list.The letters with the codes on are not sent out as I have had far to many where my clients  have not received them but  HMRC say the were sent out.

CIS refund are another terrible area.My clients receive odd cheques with no supporting documentation and  the wait for any response can be 6 months.

It is an utter shambles , Lin (all is rosy in HMRCs garden) should NEVER been placed in another senior position where she can make at HMRC the shambles she made at the Borders Agency. its just not good enough and getting worse .

Where are the Institutes ? All in Lins rosy garden waiting for a job?

The phones need 5000 people manning them .Look at the calls received , say 12minutes a call 150,000 calls a day - do the maths. In a 12 hour day how many people do you require....5,000 in 2 shifts . How many are there .Its NOT rocket science.

In some months 65% of calls were "answered" ...so a third were not! Disgusting .Im afraid the management should not be allowed to run  run a whelk stall .

How many calls do AMAZON have a day and how may are unanswered ? a third ? I think not.

Time to man the barricades because HMRC are only going to get worse!

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Replying to User deleted:
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By Ken of Chester le Street
30th Jun 2015 18:38

what about letters?

An agent received a copy of letter to a company of which I am secretary saying that its PAYE account was £00.00 in February, would he please check?  The letter was received in June.

A taxpayer received about a  letter asking him to file an SATR for 2014-2015. He had filed in May and received a repayment c 22/05/15. Despite being dated 06/04/2015 the letter was received on 29/06/2015.

I'm not sure they know how to send them any more.

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By Tim Vane
25th Jun 2015 18:08

Quality?

If we assume that it will cost around £5million to recruit the 3,000 staff members, provide them with office space, telephones and computers, that leaves £40 million, so say £13K each for training and salary.

That is fractionally more than one might expect to be paid as a "customer advisor" at B&Q, and pretty much what you'd get as a Customer Assistant at Tesco.

Ah well, every little helps.

 

 

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Replying to Moonbeam:
paddle steamer
By DJKL
25th Jun 2015 19:01

Who said the positions were full time?

Tim Vane wrote:

If we assume that it will cost around £5million to recruit the 3,000 staff members, provide them with office space, telephones and computers, that leaves £40 million, so say £13K each for training and salary.

That is fractionally more than one might expect to be paid as a "customer advisor" at B&Q, and pretty much what you'd get as a Customer Assistant at Tesco.

Ah well, every little helps.

 

 

Who said the positions were full time, maybe like some of our retailers zero hours contracts are the order of the day,nobody calling you can go home.

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chips_at_mattersey
By Les Howard
25th Jun 2015 19:21

Do the maths.

One target is to answer 80% of calls. With 60million per annum, that leaves 12 million unanswered - and that is the target!

We welcome the extra money, but there is much to do before the service is genuinely satisfactory.

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By jvenegas16
26th Jun 2015 10:54

Contradiction

At the time of cutting public expenditure, HMRC comes with the great idea of spending £45M. Where will the money come from? 

So the inefficiencies on the service was due to lack of funding? However, they have been denying it all along. 

Do you really need to spend £45M to improve the quality of service, meaning customer care, customer service, courtesy and politeness? I don't think so.

Have the analysed the pick times for the different types of calls (tax credit renewal, self-assessment, wrong letters, wrong tax codes issued, general enquiries, etc?

It will be money in the drain if the quality does not improve and then they are going to chase genuine and innocent taxpayers to squeeze a few more pounds off them as they are easy targets for them.

i hope there is some investment in professionalism, and also in responding fully and in a timely and orderly manner to letters, change of details, claims, etc.

Promises and expectations are not more than promises and expectations until they are fulfilled.

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By mikefleming3028
26th Jun 2015 11:19

its not just un-answered calls

Taken in isolation the stats are bad enough but considering these in conjunction with everything else HMRC has to deliver in its drive to provide an acceptable service to its "customers" might lead you to conclude that in its politically driven charge to reduce its cost base it has lost its focus on its core principals. This is not the fault of the poor "customer facing" foot soldiers who no doubt do their best given the pressures put upon them. The responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of   HMRC senior leadership team ie Lin Homer along with fellow members of her Executive Board not forgetting that Mr Gauke MP also has had a significant hand in overseeing an appalling decline in standards not just in unanswered telephone calls but also in just about every other  HMRC service. If HMRC is to maintain its credibility going forward then in my view its needs a change of leadership as the performance of the many is being tarnished by the lack lustre performance of the few.

With the fast approach of HMRCs digital service and the "abolition" of the SA return change at the top is a must as failing to act now will inevitably result in another HMRC train wreck possibly the biggest and costliest one so far.

The bottom line is that these people are public servants and its our money they are playing with. Its time they stopped playing and started to deliver the value for money service we all deserve and indeed demand.             

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By Adrian Smith
26th Jun 2015 11:20

Still cutting people off

A member of out staff this morning got through to the Agent helpline and was then put though to another department (not agent dedicated) and got the message that all staff busy so try calling back later.

 

More agent dedicated helplines would certainly benefit all round

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By AdShawBPR
26th Jun 2015 11:21

Lack of ambition

There does seem to be a slight lack of ambition if HMRC aim to answer 80% of calls and ignore only 20%.  If you aim low that's where you'll hit!

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By RogerMT
26th Jun 2015 11:43

New fangled means of communication...

...it's called "email", HMRC. Every other business in the world uses it, your argument that it is insecure simply doesn't wash.
Spent an hour on the phone to HMRC today trying to resolve an RTI FPS submission problem, only to get the most non-committal answers possible. I could have had the same conversation via email (or webchat) in a tenth the time.

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Replying to Mr J Andrews:
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By RogerMT
26th Jun 2015 11:45

...by the way, 20 minutes of that hour was spent on hold. No surprise there!

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By monksview
26th Jun 2015 12:02

Trained staff?

And RogerMT, if you called them again with the same query you'd get a different answer.  How well versed in the tax system are these new staff going to be?  If they are only briefly trained they may even make matters worse.

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By Robbo
26th Jun 2015 12:09

HMRC service is appalling & has been declining steadily, how Ms Homer has the gall not to resign I don't knowuntil lokking at her record, the only person to be success while failing at everything.

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By 68fw
26th Jun 2015 12:19

It's a bloody disgrace!

It's a bloody disgrace... getting on for TWENTY YEARS after the introduction of self assessment and GROSS mismanagement at HMRC continues.

"Doing a Lin Homer" has become a byword for overpaid civil service incompetence at the highest level.

Sadly it seems, Ms Homer is no stranger to repeated failure and (contrary to accepted commercial practices) associated personal reward... in Ms Homer's world "failure = success" like I said... just a bloody disgrace, welcome to 1984.

 

 

source:

www.dailymail.co.uk/.../The-rise-rise-Ms-Incompetence-Border-Agency-.

 

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By NYB
26th Jun 2015 12:17

HMRC Service
Amazed that the Lyn Homer person is still in her job. God knows how many promises she has made over the years none of which have ever improved the service one jot. In fact the whole thing is imploding even more and all services are getting worse.
The whole level of contacting HMRC is a nightmare & when eventually you may get to speak with .someone it's nigh on impossible to get a satisfactory answer.
This is written by someone who has spent half the morning battling with their total inefficiency.

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By User deleted
26th Jun 2015 12:27

But will they ...

... be ditching the voice recognition system - tax is far too complex to be able to provide a few concise words to direct a call, I would struggle as an advisor let alone a s a tax payer (as I have said before, keep pressing *** and you will eventually get a key pad menu (even though you still have to guess what button to push)

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By MarkKing
26th Jun 2015 12:29

Post is just as bad

The comment regarding post seems to be the norm right now.

I have been chasing some late filed paper returns since the start of March and it was only resolved last week. Agents line confirmed a 13 week backlog of post at the moment and that is just for the matter to be dealt with initially. It may well then have a 4 week trip to another internal department before action is taken.

Absolutely disgusting that we as agents and our clients get letters demanding 30 day responses (having arrived nearly 2 weeks after the date it was written thanks to HMRCs 4th class post), yet the return correspondence takes over 90 days.

You would think that once a matter has been opened and HMRC write back for further information the response from us would be fast-tracked by some sort of triage system on post rather than simply being put to the back of the queue once again.

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chips_at_mattersey
By Les Howard
26th Jun 2015 12:30

Quality of Information

Dealing exclusively with VAT, I have a constant issue with poor quality information from HMRC. Letters fail to clearly or accurately address issues; staff are largely ignorant of the legal and/or case law issues, etc.

If there was more investment in technical training to front line staff, that would be very welcome.

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By Nebs
26th Jun 2015 12:30

Tell us how long we will be waiting

Many call centres have a queue system that tells you "You are 14th in the queue" then 1 minute later "You are 8th in the queue". You can soon work out roughly how long you will have to wait. Could HMRC get such a system, so as we can decide quickly if it is worth waiting or phoning back later.

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By User deleted
26th Jun 2015 12:37

The other day on IRIS ...

...  I went from second to fifth!

I can only think this may be where you can duck out to listen to current issues, then go back in the queue where you were previously.

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By pauljohnston
26th Jun 2015 12:47

OGA

This is caused by the fraction number of calls/number of adviser.  So when one adviser decides on a loo break the numbers cahnged

 

Dont you feel loved by Iris.

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By viraljharia
26th Jun 2015 12:48

Hopefully the money does filter through

It is a very welcome announcement to improve customer services. It seems HMRC have been heavily investing in combating Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Fraud. Small customers have taken a back seat. When you tell a client that it will take HMRC 35 days to process a form, its "beggars belief", that we are labelled a 1st world country!! Hopefully we do get to speak to a person who knows about the Tax we are calling about and not just a person who is reading of a screen...

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By pauljohnston
26th Jun 2015 12:53

Liz Homer I understand is paid around £188,000 to run  the largest department that collects Government Income.  I would have expected a much higher salary and consequently a much more able person to run such an important department.

 

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Replying to Sara79:
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By 68fw
27th Jun 2015 10:13

Homer

pauljohnston wrote:

Liz Homer I understand is paid around £188,000 to run  the largest department that collects Government Income.  I would have expected a much higher salary and consequently a much more able person to run such an important department.

 

I couldn't disagree more... do not have to subscribe to radical socialist beliefs to question the sanity of corporate dogma which demands a chief executive officer is worth more than 140 times the rate of their employee... may conclude corporate capitalism values are not the answer for the public sector and that social balance and decency has been exhausted to collapse, just as it ever was...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XylG3L5WxMs

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PJ
By paulgrca.net
26th Jun 2015 12:59

In the private

sector a target of answering 80% of calls would be unacceptable.

 

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Replying to tom123:
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By User deleted
26th Jun 2015 16:07

When I was a dark haired ....

paulgrca.net wrote:

sector a target of answering 80% of calls would be unacceptable.

...trainee accountant supplementing my income at Pizza Hut, 2 rings was the mantra! Any more and the manager would go ape!

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By david ryan
26th Jun 2015 13:42

HMTC telephone performance

They set a target of 8 of 10 calls being answered? They actually achieved 6 of 10

 

In a commercial world customer service at 80% or less would result in the CEO`s replacement and or the company going out of business.

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By justsotax
26th Jun 2015 13:49

£188k for that waste of space...

no wonder there is a deficit...

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By mydoghasfleas
26th Jun 2015 13:51

I see there are comments about time for Lin Homer to move on ...

... if you have observed her career, 3 years is about the longest she stays in any job before moving in, given the disasters at the helm of Borders and Immigration Agency now UK Borders Agency, followed by the rail franchising mess with Virgin is it any wonder now HMRC is reaping the benefit of her expertise.  All we need remember is we are the second oldest profession and were put on this Earth to sort out the mess left by the oldest (lawyers) of which LH is one.

As for the risible 80% target that is only to answer the call, not to resolve it.  I think I will pack this lark in and develop an idea I have for fireproof trailer tyres.  They will be an instant success as they will last on the journey to hell in said handcarts

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By lindsay.tosh
26th Jun 2015 14:00

I wonder how they would do if they got the "sale", in their case the tax due, only if they answered the call. I suspect the target would be pretty close to 100% and heads would roll if the high nineties were not achieved. They need to think of us as customers not an irrelevant nuisance.

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7om
By Tom 7000
26th Jun 2015 14:00

This cannot be true

We ae supposed to be having austerity.

They should stop this at once. They should then lay off half the existing stafff to save money.

 

If the UK tax payer wants any advice they can just jolly well go along to the local high street accountant and pay for it like everyone else and save the country some money.

 

kind regards

 

You local high street accountant.

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By Financeman
26th Jun 2015 14:17

Must try harder

Welcome news but only a start imo

Numerous tomes of research support the idea of a larger tax take, the larger the HMRC staffing level

I support this view - and I'm normally anti public services

Time to now address the rest of the ill run service - from poor advice, to no knowledge, to unanswered replies - truly a national disgrace at present

 

 

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By leon0001
26th Jun 2015 15:14

Assigning staff to phone enquiries

I think that you will find that the additional call handling staff are being reassigned from dealing with post.

Despite the increasing delays (latest recent reply was over 5 months after I wrote to them) I am now writing more letters than I did a couple of years ago. I have to write because it is much less time consuming than trying to phone. I also tend to receive useful replies, the call centre staff are often clueless.

I don't believe that the main reason for eschewing email is taxpayer security. HMRC is obviously afraid of what heir staff will put in email responses and who these will be sent to.

As far as Ms Homer is concerned - D'oh!

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By tony kluge
26th Jun 2015 17:00

HMRC Takes Another Step for Mankind

Back in the ripe old year of 2001 I had the pleasure of migrating the part of  what is now the HMRC (Inland Revenue back in them days) from paper based customer contact to electronic systems (virtual call centres with 3000 seats) to handle telephone enquiries along with a view to servicing other forms of electronic contact such as email and web integration.

Given the fact that day to day business operations had to adjust their working practices  surrounding customer contact via electronic means was seen as “one giant step for the Inland Revenue” and a huge achievement to meet ministerial targets.

Target levels at that time were to answer 80% of the calls within 20 seconds.

Therefore, what has happened in this period of nearly 15 years? It would appear that the HMRC has gone the way of other big businesses. Charging more and giving less.

Owning up to answering some 65% of calls is an embarrassment.

I had the pleasure the other day to contact the HMRC. Yes, one is answered straight away and is given a series of prompts to hopefully steer the caller in the right direction. Then one gets the all too familiar message, “we are extremely busy and we will be with you as soon as an agent becomes available”. After two minutes, I hung up. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that customer dissatisfaction is at an all time low.

So looking back it appears that efforts to improve things were not very fruitful.

To provide the HMRC with a quick fix and to save the HMRC spending huge sums of money on people, processes and technology, perhaps 100% of the taxpayers should get together and decide which 60% will pay their taxes. This will then enable the HMRC to provide 100% service levels to its customers. 

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By SS ACCOUNTING SERVICES
27th Jun 2015 17:37

CUSTOMER CARE AT HMRC

I agree with the need to add CT, PAYE(employers helpline), VAT on the agent dedicated enquiries list. Its sad that one has to be holding on for an hour or more on general service enquiries only to be told that it is the wrong line and given another number where you have to again wait for ages to get answered..

 

It is truelly time for the service delivery to be improved  a long mile.

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By Marion Hayes
28th Jun 2015 07:21

Online chat service

I tried this the other say and was very impressed - until the general meltdown happened. You could print the transcript for posterity too.

Do we know the criteria for topics etc here?

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By AndrewV12
28th Jun 2015 08:45

Its a start, but its going in the right direction, thats all.

 

Another example of, lets get rid of a load of staff, oooohhh we cannot cope get them back, and we can make a big noise about it..

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By nogammonsinanundoubledgame
29th Jun 2015 08:08

What the stats don't show ...

If I am put on hold for 40 minutes and then the call is answered, I imagine that this is clocked up in the stats as a call successfully answered. Personally I would rank that as a failure.

With kind regards

Clint Westwood

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By lesleyparker2604
29th Jun 2015 08:38

I agree that we need dedicated agent CT, VAT and PAYE helplines.  Agents tend to have more complex queries and invariably the call centre staff cannot give an answer and rather than being able to transfer you to a technical officer who may be able to help you are then told that someone will call back within 3 working days - ask for them to leave a number and name if you are not at your desk and no can do - you're back in the queue !  Most of us would rather poke our eye out with a sharp stick than call HMRC -  it really is a last resort.

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By JCresswellTax
29th Jun 2015 09:18

Maybe they should use

Unpaid interns????

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By the_Poacher
29th Jun 2015 11:37

You get what you pay for
Whilst it's clear that HMRC is poorly managed from the top, it must be an incredibly difficult job. Ever dwindling resources, political interference at every turn, awful and worsening staff morale, poor training and IT and a declining skills base.

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By User deleted
29th Jun 2015 16:12

Just been on hold for VAT helpline ...

... I managed to:

Re-fill two printersPrint 2 Annual ReturnsFile a tax return online and the signed copy in the clients fileGet halfway through a payroll

!!!

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By Thaya10
30th Jun 2015 11:42

HMRC does customer service U-turn

£45m for 3,000 staff. That means average wages of £15,000. At that level where do you get quality staff. Hope they do not mislead their customers.

 

Thaya

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