Hold music costs you more than frustration. It may be costing Americans billions every year.

A creeping tax on time

Three minutes listening to hold music. Ten minutes wrestling with an app’s captcha. An hour trying to cancel a subscription you never use. Those small moments add up — and a new report tries to put a number on them.

Look, the Groundwork Collaborative estimates U.S. Households lose roughly $165 billion to $166 billion a year to what it calls the "annoyance economy."

The term covers the time, fees and friction people face while navigating services: junk fees on tickets and bank accounts, robocalls and scams, long waits for medical or government services, and the maze of bureaucracy you hit when you ask for a refund. Chad Maisel, a policy fellow at Groundwork Collaborative and coauthor of the report, says the annoyance economy is "all the ways that people experience friction in their everyday life." Neale Mahoney, a Stanford University economist who collaborated on the study, helped estimate those costs.

One-sentence paragraphs can hit hard.

How the damage breaks down

The report pins numbers on specific annoyances so the scale becomes hard to ignore. Junk fees — extra charges tacked on to ticket purchases, hotel stays and bank transactions — account for about $90 billion a year, the largest single slice. Phone scams cost roughly $25.4 billion, and time spent negotiating with health insurance administrators adds about $21.6 billion. Waiting for medical services racks up another $19.4 billion.

Robocalls alone account for $8 billion, while waiting for government services shows up as $1.6 billion.

Those figures come from Groundwork Collaborative’s February paper, which pooled research and estimates to create a snapshot of how friction hits households’ wallets and calendars.

Why friction is profitable

Companies don’t always make things difficult by accident. The Groundwork report notes that firms benefit when cancellation is harder than signing up. The think tank cites prior studies showing that making customers jump through hoops can lift revenues anywhere from the low double digits to more than 200% in some settings.

Thing is, ease of purchase and pain of cancellation are a business model for lots of industries. Subscription apps, ticket sellers and financial firms often optimize for sign-ups and let the exit door be cluttered.

That imbalance translates into lost cash for consumers. If consumers stop trying to reclaim small refunds or abandon attempts to correct billing errors because it’s too time-consuming, companies keep more revenue. It’s friction as a revenue engine.

Real people, real headaches

Groundwork’s coauthor Chad Maisel describes how a simple rebate turned into a half-hour ordeal: downloading an app, printing a receipt, taking a photo and uploading it. "I had to download the app," he told reporters. "I had to print out the receipt I was given, because I had to mail it in. And before I mailed it in, I had to take a picture of it and upload it to the app."

And others report worse. Waiting on hold, getting the runaround from automated systems, being routed through menus that never connect you to a human — all of it's time consumers can’t get back.

Where scams and robocalls fit in

Some parts of the annoyance economy are more malicious than others. Phone scams and robocalls extract dollars directly from consumers through fraud or deceptive tactics. Groundwork’s numbers put scams and robocalls together at more than $33 billion annually.

That’s separate from the time cost. Blocking calls, sorting spam, and cleaning up identity fraud add both stress and hours of work — time many households could be spending on paid labor or rest.

Practical ways to fight back

Here’s the thing — you don’t have to accept all of it. There are tactics that can cut the cost of friction.

First, try to reach a human faster. Brian Cheung, an NBC correspondent, recommends GetHuman.com, a website that lists direct customer-service numbers and tips for skipping menus. Calling on Tuesday through Thursday often gets you shorter wait times than Mondays or Fridays, according to Cheung.

Second, consider outsourcing the hassle. Professional negotiators and subscription-management services will handle cancellations and bill haggles for a fee, usually a slice of the money they save you. That’s not free — but if you value your time, it can be worth it.

Third, gather your documents before you call. Account numbers, screenshots and order receipts speed up the process and reduce the chance you’ll have to call back. And if a frontline agent can’t help, ask for a supervisor — it may mean more wait time, but supervisors sometimes have the authority to reverse fees or approve refunds.

What regulators and companies are doing

Some policy moves aim to push back. There are ongoing debates about banning junk fees or imposing stricter rules on robocalls and deceptive charges. Groundwork’s report is part of a broader push by consumer groups and some lawmakers to make the rules tilt more toward households.

Companies’ responses vary. Some have streamlined cancellation processes and improved transparency after public pressure or lawsuits. Others quietly keep the friction in place because it helps the bottom line.

Why this matters for the economy

When friction soaks up hours that workers could spend on paid tasks, the macro effect can be meaningful. Time spent on hold or untangling billing mistakes is time not spent producing or consuming in other ways. And the lost dollars become a transfer from households to firms — often without public notice.

Right now, most of those costs are scattered and small, which helps explain why they don’t get more political attention. But add them together and they look a lot like a stealth tax on everyday life.

Small fixes, big potential

Some remedies are administrative: clearer itemized bills, default easy refund pathways, and stronger enforcement against deceptive add-ons. Other fixes require business-model shifts: making cancellations as easy as sign-ups would reduce the sweet spot for the annoyance economy.

Frankly, many consumers already vote with their wallets when they can. But where the pain is hidden or the process is opaque, that market pressure doesn’t do much. That’s where policy and better corporate design come into play.

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"It’s all the ways that people experience friction in their everyday life," said Chad Maisel, policy fellow at Groundwork Collaborative.