A big ol' tip of the hat to Hal Emmer, who pointed out gethuman.com in a recent e-mail discussion. This is a site listing the customer service phone numbers for (at the time of this writing) 559 different companies, along with a strategy for reaching an actual human being when you call (example: Press #; at prompt press #; at prompt press #; at prompt press 3.)

There's also a facility for people to rate their customer service experience and report how long they waited on hold, so you can review a quick history before you dial.

This looks like a very useful tool, and one that I'll be putting on my Cool Links page for future reference...