How long is too long to wait on the phone for help from a government office?

Five minutes? 10? Half an hour?

If you had to wait for one hour and 45 minutes, would it boil your blood?

That’s what happened when we called the A. Grenville & William Davis Court House in Brampton on Thursday, to ask where to direct a letter requesting court information.

We suspect we’re not alone in waiting and waiting for someone to pick up at a government office, and want to hear from readers who have been on hold for at least half an hour, or dialed a number where nobody ever answered.

The information we needed can only be requested by snail mail or fax — no emails allowed — but since the Brampton court is one of Canada’s largest, it seemed like a good idea to make sure our letter got to the right department.

There was nothing about it on the courthouse website, so we called the main number — 905-456-4700 — thinking it was a simple matter.

Uh, no.

We followed automated prompts until someone picked up and said she’d transfer us to another line, where we could get the information we needed.

After we were transferred, we waited about 15 minutes, until we had to take an incoming call and hung up.

We tried again a short time later, following the prompts until we spoke to another person who transferred us. Once again we waited 15 minutes or so before hanging up.

It was irritating, but a soothing message that repeated every 30 seconds or so while on hold helped us relax and put our mind at ease:

“We regret the delay in answering your call. Your call is in queue and will be answered in a moment.”

So we hiked up our pants and tried a third time. When we got to a woman who said she’d transfer us, we objected. She said that was her only option, adding we could always come to the courthouse.

We were pretty sure nobody would pick up. So we tried an experiment: Put the phone on the speaker, remain on hold and see what would happen.

By the time it was 4:30, when the court offices close for the day, we’d been holding for one hour and 45 minutes.

And we wanted to strangle the soothing messenger.

STATUS: Brendan Crawley, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Attorney General, apologized for the delay, said they investigated and provided an explanation: “The main telephone line at the courthouse in Brampton is answered by an automated attendant. Until you brought this issue to our attention, court staff in Brampton was not aware that if a caller did not choose one of the prompts provided by the attendant, the caller would be placed on hold, or the phone line would ring, without direction.” That’s not what happened. Not even close. We were transferred to the right extension all three times, but nobody picked up. Simple as that. We suspect that’s the way it’s done at that office, at least until the media starts asking.

So tell us your experiences about waiting on the phone while calling a government office. We’ll make a column out of the best.

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