A senior sales caller at Sky was dismissed from her role after she told customers to wait for “just a second” before hanging up on them.
Lorraine Hunter, who had a 30-year career in customer service, rudely and repeatedly ended conversations when she became frustrated with callers.
Ms Hunter, a veteran call centre agent, attempted to attribute the disconnections to technical issues.
She subsequently lodged a claim for unfair dismissal, but an employment tribunal ultimately ruled against her, saying that “hanging up on a customer” is explicitly listed as potential gross misconduct in the company’s rulebook.
Ms Hunter had been employed as a customer priority specialist at Sky Subscriber Services Limited since 1995. Her responsibilities included assisting high-profile or high-value customers, resolving their issues, and managing contract adjustments.
An investigation was launched in November 2024 after an incident led managers to believe that Ms Hunter might be disconnecting customers’ calls. Agents’ phone calls were recorded and stored so they could be listened to in full for the investigation.
Seven phone calls were identified in the records that seemed to be prematurely disconnected by Ms Hunter.
Disconnecting a call requires a ‘two-step physical action’ and is unlikely to be done accidentally, the tribunal heard.
The first of these calls, from July 25 2024, lasted just 13 seconds before Ms Hunter hung up, and while she could not be heard on the recording, the background noise from the office could.
She claimed that te reason she did not immediately call back was that she must have dialled the wrong number, but she ended up successfully calling back two hours later.
The second call was internal: Another agent transferred a high-priority customer to Ms Hunter.
When the other agent asked Ms Hunter to “wait a moment”, she said “okay, thank you”, before hanging up.
The third call was from a customer explaining that their signal from Sky was intermittent.
Ms Hunter claimed that she could not hear the customer, but hung up just two seconds after saying “hello”.
The fourth call did register that there were technical issues before Ms Hunter hung up, but she did not call the customer back once these had been resolved, as was proper.
A fifth call was from an “irate” customer who was attempting to cancel his contract with Sky.
Ms Hunter asked him to “bear with me a second” before placing him on mute for a minute, then disconnecting the call entirely.
She claimed that she had not done so and that the only reason she had not called back was that she did not have his number.
The customer called back to complain that he had been hung up on.
The sixth call identified was from September 2024, when Ms Hunter called a customer to put through their order.
She told them that it was “new” for her and asked them to “give me a second, just a second”. She then hung up just six minutes into the call, though she did call this customer back.
She ended the seventh call three minutes before her shift was due to end and sent a WhatsApp to colleagues saying: “Call dropped if he calls back in please apologise.”
Ms Hunter was subsequently invited to a conduct meeting on 28 May 2025, where these calls were played for her.
On 2 June she was summarily dismissed, being told: “you have breached our policies by disconnecting customers and failing to call customers back which represents a significant risk moving forward.”
She appealed, claiming she had not hung up and that there must have been technical issues, but she was reminded that information about technical issues are stored in the calls’ records and the decision was upheld.
Ms Hunter then took her claim of unfair dismissal to an employment tribunal in Edinburgh, but Employment Judge Michelle Sutherland said it was entirely reasonable to dismiss her.
The judge concluded: “[Sky] had a reasonable belief that [Mr Hunter] had deliberately and prematurely disconnected customer calls (i.e. hung up on customers).
“[Sky] had carried out a reasonable investigation and formed that belief on reasonable grounds.
“[Sky] is a very large employer with significant administrative resources and a dedicated HR function.
“Having regard to the size and administrative resources of [Sky] and the disciplinary process as a whole, there was no unreasonable failure to comply with their own disciplinary procedure or the ACAS Code of Practice.
“[Sky] acted reasonably in all the circumstances in treating that as a sufficient reason to dismiss [Mr Hunter] notwithstanding her long service without prior warning.
“[Mr Hunter’s] dismissal was fair and her complaint of unfair dismissal is accordingly dismissed.”
