More than 11 million calls to Centrelink and Medicare were unanswered in the year to April, while wait times increased to almost an hour for some categories of support.

LPT: if anybody needs to but can’t get through to Centrelink, go into one of the services Australia branch. If they can’t fix your problem, they’ll connect you to an internal number which doesn’t just hang up on you.

It’s fucking disgraceful that they don’t even answer the phone anymore. Seriously one of the stupidest things they’ve rolled out. There’s no ifs or buts about it, it’s disgusting and needs to stop.

You can also try calling the complaints number and they can do the same thing as the branch people, but I’ve heard conflicting reports about this. It used to be how you had to get through, but I’ve heard recently that sometimes that number just hangs up on you too. But if they do answer, they’ll will usually just put you through to a non hanging up number, at least if it means you won’t make them do the paperwork to lodge a complaint.

Also, when you do get through, please try to remember that they’re just minimum wage people doing a shitty job. They don’t make the phones hang up on you, and they aren’t the reason your claims take months to process, or you were underpaid, or whatever’s gone wrong. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. You can express your annoyance to them, but abusing or yelling at them doesn’t fix the problem, and won’t make them answer quicker.

If you really want somebody to yell at, write a letter or email to your local MP. Or the minister for social services. Or anyone else who’s penny pinching tactics caused this whole mess

Also remember you’ll get through this soon, even though it doesn’t feel like it in the moment

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      10•4 months ago

      Seriously. They keep pointing at “dole bludgers” and screaming about how much money they’re costing, meanwhile they waste billions on just paying the staff and maintaining the robot systems that “weed out” people who don’t need any assistance (along with thousands who do), while not even getting rid of half of them.

      In every system, there comes a point where it’s cheaper to just deal with people exploiting it after the fact, than to invest in systems to prevent those people. And when you factor in the suffering of real people in need, we crossed that point years ago

      Centrelink is an absolute blight on the country

    • @[email protected]English
      3•4 months ago

      That’s the point of running it so poorly. Axe another public service and idiots will thank them for it.