I had a really bad experience in the past with Newegg and their lower levels of customer service. At one point I documented and blogged it, but that blog is no longer up unfortunately.
Anyway, the good news is that once I got in touch with someone higher up the chain they were like, "That never should have happened" and worked to make it right. It just took a ton of kicking and screaming to get there, which really wasn't worth it on my part, but in the end, they did the right thing.
One thing I'm seeing more and more is that companies are holding back their lower tier support employees from actually being helpful. For example, have you ever had one of those "Instant Online Chat Support" things help you out? No, they are always so unempowered its not even funny.
I've used an "Instant Online Chat Support" for TurboTax (answering questions) and at my auto repair company (to schedule appointments). Worked fine for me. When done well, it can be vastly superior to phoning in. But like you said... the people on the other side need to be empowered.
I used the online chat support for an Asus laptop whose monitor went out after a few months. I kept asking if this was a human or a machine because it felt incredibly automated. But in the end, it was very helpful and I got the information I needed to ship the laptop on their dime and got the laptop back a week or two later and things were great.
I've used Typefrag's livechat feature and it was very useful for finding out information about why my ventrilo server was down and when it'd be back up. Which is what instant connection services are for in my opinion, contacting to ask questions and get answer immediately not to get things sorted at a level that would require any sort of changes.
Anyway, the good news is that once I got in touch with someone higher up the chain they were like, "That never should have happened" and worked to make it right. It just took a ton of kicking and screaming to get there, which really wasn't worth it on my part, but in the end, they did the right thing.
One thing I'm seeing more and more is that companies are holding back their lower tier support employees from actually being helpful. For example, have you ever had one of those "Instant Online Chat Support" things help you out? No, they are always so unempowered its not even funny.