The mobile phone provider EE has introduced a 50p fee to jump the queue on its customer service helpline. Is that a price worth paying or a kick in the teeth?

Do you ever get fed up with hanging on the line waiting to talk to your energy provider, mobile company or bank? What if you could pay a small fee to skip the queue? That’s what EE has up its sleeve.

You’ll be invited by an automated message to pay a flat fee of 50p when you call up EE (ooh that rhymed!) to use its ‘priority service’. Pay monthly and sim-only customers have been presented with this ‘opportunity’ for the past week. An EE customer here at Which? HQ has phoned EE’s customer service number to confirm that this option is indeed being presented.

EE’s customer service fee

It looks like some of EE’s customers aren’t happy about it. Andrew Griffiths told BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours:

‘I thought it was a bad idea for a company to offer to provide what really ought to be a standard level of customer service for a fee. ‘It makes you think that perhaps they might not be trying too hard to answer the non-prioritised calls.’

We reached out to EE for comment. A spokesperson told us:

‘Our aim is to set a new standard for customer service in the telecoms sector, developing our support to meet customers’ increasing expectations and needs. As part of this two new UK call centres opened already this year, part of our plan to return over 1,000 customer service roles to the UK from overseas. ‘We’re also introducing some charges for customer services. This includes a standard charge per call of 25p on new SIM Only plans for customer service, as well as an option for all customers to jump queues at busy times, for a small fee.’

What do you think about paying to skip the call waiting queue? Is it any different to paying for queue jumping at the airport?

Would you pay a 50p fee to skip the customer service call waiting queue? No (88%, 1,608 Votes) Yes (12%, 215 Votes) Total Voters: 1,823