ROBIN CARSON | For the Communications Committee

On July 3 , the New York Times ran an article giving reasons — cost being chief among them — why many companies deliberately make customer service opaque , unfriendly and sometimes downright nasty . For businesses without much competition such as cable or mobile phone providers , customer service is an expense that is tempting to cut . I have been told plainly by one such company that if I didn ' t like their service , I should try their competition . So I did , but I am certain that they didn ' t even notice my leaving .

When you need to contact a company about a complaint , I would suggest a very low-tech alternative to camping on a customer service telephone line , or writing an email that gets ignored , or trying to find a telephone number for someone — anyone !— in authority : write a letter .

My father worked in an office all his life and told me that the best thing about sending a letter is that someone must make a decision about what to do with it . It might just be crumpling it into a ball and chucking it , but at least a human being — not an automated system — has to make that decision . Moreover , as letters become less and less common , they also become novelties on the non-virtual desktops of people to whom handwriting represents a foreign language . As such , that lonely letter requires attention that it might not have received in the piles of mail of yore .

You can increase your chances of getting the letter beyond the wastebasket if you send it registered . Sending the letter by registered mail ( an extra $ 10 ) may nudge the receiver into action if only because it is his or her name on the receipt . It is still possible , too , to have acknowledgement of that receipt sent to you .

Your first challenge will be to find the address of the company that you are writing to . Often , that is fairly easy if you find the company ' s website on your computer , but some websites do not present that information without digging . Digging can begin on the main website page , usually the first one you come to . If you scroll to the bottom of the page , there is almost always a small table of what else is on the site . One of these is probably ‘ Contact us .’ Click on that , and you may be taken to a page with a company address .

I say ‛ may be taken ’ because not all companies provide that information . If they don ' t , you will have to try searching using your browser for other sources that can provide an address . If you enter the name of the company into your browser , you will get a list of

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