I know what you mean. My Cell Phone provider is so "Internet Happy" it makes me mad too. I had some questions concerning my roaming area so I went online to look at my coverage map which was vague to say the least.
So I tried to call but being that it was around Christmas the recording told me my wait was around 45 minutes. Yeah, I have that much time to be on hold. So, as you, I relented and went back to the internet. I was happy to find that I could chat to a rep live online. So I went through that little process and got someone on the other end of a chat window.
I asked him my questions and all he did was point me to links on the web site where he said I could find the information (which was wrong anyway). I proceeded to ask him why they provide a service that doesn't really provide a service. He informed me that the only reason they have live web chat is to help navigate people around the web site.
A good web site designer could have done this in a day by making the web page intuitive for users. Thus negating the online chat.
As a resolve I resorted to a message board where I found a million people asking the same questions I had and getting answers.