Customer Service: The Hunt for a Human

I was sitting at the desk of my banker the other day berating her, as a most preferred customer of the pioneer online bank, for not being able to make an online wire transfer without coming to the bank in person and wasting her and my time. The ABA bank number I had been given was incorrect. My banker could not find the correct number online so she called the target bank, her competition. I watched her write down the 800 number she was being given by the other bank followed on the next line by two numbers followed on the next line by two more numbers. The code to get to a human being I asked? Exactly.


New York Times
December 30, 2004 By KATIE HAFNER

TRY to reach customer service at Amazon.com to fix a
problem with an order and you will encounter one of the
most prominent and frustrating aspects of the Internet era:
a world devoid of humans. Not only is there no telephone
number on Amazon's Web site, but the company makes a point
of not including one. Instead, customers are asked to fill
out an online form and wait for a response.

"It's incredibly annoying," said Ellen Hobbs of Austin,
Tex., whose frustration has led her to publish Amazon.com's
customer support number at her own Web site.

"They haven't invested the kind of money in helping
you solve problems as they have in selling you things."
In December alone, some 1,100 people visited Ms. Hobbs's site.