A CHUM didn’t take kindly to a piece in our paper last week about tax returns being filled in online over the festive period.

It brought back unhappy memories of his frustrating dealings with HMRC.

In fact, the umbrage he took stretched many miles across rural Fenland to our respective offices.

He thought readers might like to see the letter he fired off to HM Revenue and Customs and I agreed.

After explaining why he’d sent a letter and not an e-mail my chum, let’s call him Winston, told HM Revenue and Customs he had given up on phone calls and e-mails after three days of trying to get a response.

He wrote: “I invariably ended up with a recorded message saying that your staff were far too busy to talk to me at the moment, and that I should ring again another time – to listen to all your �helpful messages again (at my expense), to be told again that your staff were far to busy to talk to me at the moment, and that I should ring again another time.

“If only I could get away with that with my customers ...

“The one exception was on the final occasion, when I got right though to the correct department, was held for 15 minutes (again at my expense) and then told that ‘this line has been temporarily disconnected’ – and I was cut off.

“If only I could get away with that with my customers, too.”

Winston added: “I am sure your people all work very hard there in their warm comfortable offices collecting our taxes to pay their wages and pensions, but in the real world out here we would have three choices – which don’t include �telling people to go away.

“They are – employ more staff, get more efficient, or lose customers/work/jobs.”

Should Winston get a reply I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to pass that on, too.