VHI's message to callers: "...We are unable to take your call at the moment"

The VHI’s call centre struggled to cope with a large volume of phone calls yesterday from customers concerned about its latest price increases.

Throughout the morning and early afternoon many people trying to contact the company with a view to changing their renewal dates, switching to cheaper plans or leaving the company altogether got through to a recorded message which simply said:

“We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls and are unable to take your call at the moment.”

The automated message could do no more than advise callers to visit the health insurer’s website for more information.

By 4pm, however, the message had been replaced with an alternate message which offered a call-back service.

This new message encouraged people to leave their details, including policy numbers, and promised that they would receive a call from VHI.

There was no indication how long people would have to wait before they received a call.

While the VHI system appeared to be unable to handle general queries from existing customers, it was able to deal with calls from people wishing to join.

When The Irish Timesselected the menu option for new customers, it was connected to someone in the call centre within three minutes.

It is unclear if many other people were in the same queue.

A VHI spokeswoman said the call centre had not crashed and it was still taking calls but it was forced to introduce the call-back service because of the high volume of calls.

She said it would have extra staff on site today to handle calls.

VHI helpline: 1850-444444