Do important customers get better service? In a word, yes. At a growing number of call centers, when you punch in (or say) your account number, the computer system instantly identifies if you are a frequent user, an “advantage” member, or a business and may route you to a different tier of agents. “At some companies, the best customers go to the best agents, and the nickel-and-dime customers go to the least trained ones,” says customer-service consultant Diane Graden.

What’s more, customer-service reps are often instructed to be more accommodating to high rollers. “My computer screen showed all of the vital statistics of each customer’s history,” says former credit-card company rep Meg Salmon. “And if there was a little picture of a life preserver in the corner, it meant ‘Save this customer.’ That person had made the company such a substantial amount of money that we were supposed to do as much as we could to make her happy.”