Some customers may be able to find the answer to their own questions more quickly on a website than on the telephone, especially if the latter involves waiting on hold for 20 minutes.

ECONOMIST: Managing customers

Even finding someone knowledgeable at either agency to answer a telephone inquiry is difficult, to say the least.

FORBES: Secrets of the DOL and PBGC: What Happens When Pensions are Taken Over by the Government? (July 5, 2005)

When there is no ambulance to answer a pensioner's anguished telephone call, as sometimes happens in Yubari, the consequences become all too clear.

ECONOMIST: Into the unknown