I have a credit and needed to call to redeem it for an upcoming flight. I tried at about 2pm today, and the expected wait time was 49 minutes. Click! I figured I'd just call late enough at night that reasonable people would have settled down for the evening. So here I am now, in the middle of a 53 minute wait time!

Is there something special happening today, or is this the new normal?

Update: The 53 minute estimate at the beginning was a little long - I ended up speaking with someone after 46 minutes. And my agent was very helpful on what turned out to be a fairly involved request. So no issues with the quality of the customer service, just with the wait time even at an off-peak hour.