Nearly half of victims hang up on Action Fraud because they don’t answer the phone

ALMOST half of scam victims who try to call Action Fraud hang up amid huge waiting times, the Mail can reveal.

Hundreds of often vulnerable people now abandon attempts to get through to the reporting centre for fraud and cyber-crime every day.

And call wait-times to the service hit over 20 minutes in some months. This is four times longer than Action Fraud’s target of five minutes.

It’s prompted concerns that allowing call handlers to work from home has led to a ‘collapse in productivity’.

An Action Fraud official recently admitted the service has been struggling for a ‘significant amount of time’ and things had got worse.

Scam victims are told to contact Action Fraud and file a report either by phone or online. Case details are then sent to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), which decides if they should be passed to the police.

Yet from February to April, 44.2 pc of callers abandoned attempts to get through. Call waiting times also exceeded

20 minutes in February and were still over 17 minutes in April.

Concerns surrounding delays were raised at the Economic and Cyber Crime Committee of the City of London Police Authority Board in May. Chris Bell, the service delivery director for Action Fraud, agreed the service was ‘significantly missing their targets’ but said it was ‘linked to the number of resources in the call centre’.

He told the hearing that while they had ‘unfortunately got worse’, in part because of an increase in calls and delays vetting new recruits, there were plans to improve the system by increasing the salary and conditions of call handlers.

But he adds: ‘We know a lot of this we will have to work through until we get the next generation of the service. We are doing all we can to improve things overall, but not a great performance.’

Mr Bell later told the Mail the service had not seen a drop in reports despite the wait-times and abandoned calls. Some calls, he said, are from victims unable to get through first time.

Stefano Ruis, partner at law firm Hickman & Rose, says: ‘ That a fraud victim — likely to be confused and worried — has to wait on the phone for over 15 minutes before they can talk to someone is shameful.’

The Mail’s ‘Stop the Scammers’ campaign is calling for faster improvements to Action Fraud.