NYT: Customer Service: The Hunt for a Human

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. 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.

A. Indeed, in the pursuit of customer service, the Sisyphean challenge of making contact with a human defines the automated age, and can sometimes feel like a full-time job. "It's almost as if we're dealing with this ghostly machine," said Lauren Weinstein, a telecommunications consultant in Los Angeles who has made an avocation of studying customer service. "You assume there are people back there somewhere, but it's as if the whole purpose of these systems isn't to provide customer service but to keep the customer at arm's length." Now, by punching or typing in a sequence of numbers, or by speaking to a machine that has been programmed to understand human speech, you can have access to information previously impossible to obtain without a human - the whereabouts of a package, for instance, or the balance of a bank account. What is increasingly difficult to obtain, though, is the actual human. "Unless you want to call a neighbor," said Dorothy Meyer of Escondido, Calif. "You get them right away." Then she thought better of it. "But then, you don't. You get their answering machine." Amazon.com Customer Service Phone Number Question: What is the customer service phone number at Amazon.com? Answer: I'll confess that this was my question a few days ago. Since it took me several minutes to locate the customer service phone number -- and because I did not find it at the Amazon site, I'll share it. I hope it saves you time, if you ever need it. 1-800-201-7575. A journalist, if he's lucky, gets at most one chance in life to leave a lasting legacy. Jacob Riis exposed the horrors of tenement life. John Hersey limned the agonies that befell individual Japanese when the Enola Gay dropped the first atom bomb. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the dark crimes and vile corruption at the heart of the Nixon administration. No problem, I thought, I’ll just call their customer support number and get this corrected. Well, after 20 minutes of searching their web site looking for their phone number, I had to ask a friend who works for them if he knew what it was. He didn’t. And he couldn’t find it either. He eventually called 1-800-555-1212 (toll-free directory assistance) and got it from them. But it doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the site.

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