Hall of Hell
— on hold and in phone menus,
so nobody had to sit through it
Time to a human
Every call, minute by minute
- Phone menus Hellhold
- On hold the company
- You on the line
Hellhold, version by version
Lower is better on every chart. Our side of the clock.
Hall of Shame
Their side of the clock. Ranked from 3 calls.
Stories from the hold
How it's measured
- Only real calls count, never simulations or tests, each from its own record.
- Hell score: the average minutes until a person answers × (1 + the share of calls they hung up on while we held).
- A call dropped on the phone menus counts against Hellhold, not the company.
- Time to a human: one call to each company's main customer-service line, with no account, timed from dialing until a person speaks. Hellhold thanks them and hangs up. When a menu demanded an account it tried, in order, "I'm not a customer", "new service", "cancel service", "technical support", "agent", then 0. It never makes up an account number. The path column says which one got through.
- "Not measured yet" means Hellhold's menu navigation failed, so it says nothing about the company. Those lines get called again.
- Departments come from what the company said ("transferring you to loyalty"), or from the menu choice for the first wait.
- Versions marked ≈ come before calls were stamped, so they're matched to the release current at the time.