Are you infuriated by companies which give you a recorded message saying “we really value your call” and then send you through a Kafkaesque maze for 20 minutes before putting you on hold in a queue? Well, here’s a terrific idea — a database which tells you the phone codes needed to bypass the maze. To cheat the Citibank system, for example, just key in the sequence 0#0#0#0#0#0#.

Unfortunately, the codes on this site are for US companies. We need one for the UK — urgently.

Update: Thanks to James Cridland for pointing out that there is already a UK page. Yippee! And to Harry Metcalfe for pointing out that, in many phone-maze systems, pressing the hash key will enable you to bypass the maze. Always worth trying, he says.