Just tried to call HMRC on 0845 366 7816.

The call was answered by a machine which made me sit through ~3mins of useless messages without any way to skip them.

Then I got a recorded message telling me that they were experiencing very high call volumes, stated their opening hours, and said I should call back later.

Then it cut me off.

WIBBI the phones were answered by people?

WIBBI recorded information was played to you while you were waiting in the queue, instead of wasting your time with it and then playing appalling hold music? (Or not, in this case!)

Tip: you can bypass this nonsense by looking up your tax office and calling them directly, which *will* put you straight through to a person:

http://search3.openobjects.com/kbroker/hmrc/locator/locator.jsp