"We've worked to make sure customer support is dealing with community issues as quickly and effectively as possible, and this is the best system we've come up with," Mr. Durzy said. (EBay does provide a phone number to a subset of its power sellers who qualify for phone-based service.)

Increasingly, it is the Internet that engenders the frustration. Lou Garcia, president of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business, a group based in Alexandria, Va., said that in a recent survey of 1,000 people about their experiences with customer service, the society found that "at the top of the dislike list is that they can't find a human."

Mr. Garcia, said that he planned to stick to his guns; that it was in a company's best interests to make sure a customer could get through to a person. "Because if they can solve your problem, the chances are really high that you'll be a satisfied customer," he said.

Mr. Garcia said his 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.

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