Long spells of piped music have prompted some bank clients to record their own mind-numbing tunes to play back to the companies after asking phone operators to hold "for just a moment".
Other callers are routinely bypassing automated options, which cost time and money, and immediately choosing the option for a human being on the switchboard.
"Call centres are at risk of leaving their customers frustrated and annoyed," said Colin Shaw of Beyond Philosophy, a group of customer service advisers who have surveyed clients to discover ingenious ways of getting revenge. "It's also the case that bad service in the early stages of a customer relationship is often just a taster of what is yet to come."
The group reports that call centre customers have done a surprising amount of research into company practices, often through the internet, and have turned them to their advantage. A common example is using apparently innocuous chatter to keep a call centre worker on the line for over three minutes, which means they miss their productivity target. Putting the centre on hold, with or without homemade muzak, comes second in popularity, and asking the call centre to ring back - at the company's expense - third.
A fourth ploy, used by more experienced customers, is asking to speak to the sales team, as new business calls are given priority by most centres. Other disruptive techniques include ringing head office, then asking to be transferred.
The survey cites a report from the Citizens Advice Bureau last year, which found that almost 97% of customers questioned by the CAB said they found dealing with the centres stressful.
Call centres became a feature of British life in the mid-1980s, and there are now some 4,500 in the country, handling inquiries for councils and the NHS as well as private firms. Some 860,000 people work in the sector, which is increasingly using cheaper overseas labour.
According to a report by the Union of Communication Workers in 2003, operators in India were paid 80p an hour compared with about £6 in Britain. They also have to use phone names such as Molly to "interact better" with British customers.
