How many licks does it take...?

...to get to a customer support person who can actually answer a question?

Spent 45 minutes on the phone this morning with a credit card service company getting handed around from place to place trying to find someone with actual information. On the plus side, the last person I spoke with was helpful. On the minus side, it took over a half an hour to navigate "the system" to find this person.

While this whole experience was frustrating for me as the customer, I wonder how much it cost the company to hand me around the phone tree for a half hour? More concerning, with this kind of performance could it be that they neither care for the customer nor how much it's costing them to NOT serve? How viable can that be as a long-term strategy, especially in this economy?