Interesting interview with Ron Burley, author of UNSCREWED: The Consumer's Guide To Getting What You Paid For: 

"The mentality of companies and customer service departments these days is definitely that customers are the opposition. And this is [in] large part due to the new business model that I uncovered at the Harvard Business School. It's called churn. It's represented by the fact that the three largest cellphone companies in America last year had 1/3 of their customers leave."

"This is the thing, don't call customer service. Well, call them first. If you don't get help in 5 minutes, hang up. I mean, in the middle of the music, hang up. You can increase the chances of getting customer service 400% just by changing the phone number you call. The next number you call is the sales department."

I didn't read the whole article because it was too long, but there was some pretty interesting stuff.  I've definitely come to the same conclusion about customer service phone numbers:  Don't call them.  It's never worth it.  Do everything possible to fix the problem yourself.  I consistently have good experiences with customer service by emailing someone instead of calling.