At the marketing wonk dinner in Seattle, we were discussing the fact that it was beyond difficult to get a phone number for Amazon. Ben proceeded to call 411 and did get a local 206 number, which we called and were informed that we had to go back to the website if we wanted to get any customer service at all.

The New York Times has a great article today on the topic of finding the sometimes elusive human support that we need within a company.

A few exerpts from the article:
An underground movement to publicize Amazon's customer-service number, 800-201-7575, along with other numbers for Amazon noted on Ms. Hobbs's site, has spread across the Web. (A reporter's call to the number this week produced a human within a few minutes, but only after a recording suggested a visit to the Web site instead.)

The Consumer Action organization helped put out a consumer resource handbook published by the General Services Administration. The handbook, which includes a directory of corporations, with many phone numbers for customer service, along with e-mail and Web addresses, is available online at pueblo.gsa.gov/crh/corpormain.shtml.