It is a fact of modern life that despite living in the age of communication it has never been harder to speak directly to your bank manager, or to the utility company or even the telephone company, or to any number of officials to whom you might wish to make a complaint.

Instead your call is routed via a call centre in the Philippines or you are asked to select one of the five options then put on hold. Worse, you can find yourself repeating for the fifth time your name, address and account number only to be cut off while being transferred to yet another department.

Organisations have created an automated barrier between themselves and their customers: a firewall to put off even the most determined callers.

Happily the internet can help breach the wall. A growing number of consumer sites show you how to appeal against a parking fine or speeding ticket, claim compensation for a delayed rail journey or help reclaim exorbitant bank charges. Many websites not only offer advice on claiming back what is yours, but include template letters that have been shown to work in the past and the experiences of others explaining what to do if you are knocked back.

Some sites are official and offer a guide to your rights (although often these are buried deep inside the website) but many have been set up by wronged consumers fed up with all the red tape and hot air.

In the first of a two-part series, Webwise reveals the sites that nobody can afford to ignore. This week the focus is on travel and transport; next week we take on the banks and utility companies.

TRAIN AND TUBE

It is all very well letting the train take the strain but why should rail companies keep your money when they make you suffer the many frustrations covered by “engineering works”? They don’t like to advertise the fact but passengers delayed by more than a set amount of time (this varies according to the train operator) are entitled to claim some of their fare back. A few make it easy to make a claim online, notably www.southwestrains.co.uk , www.chilternrailways.co.uk and www.onerailway.com . But others are far less forthcoming.

After 15 years of being shunted into sidings, Chris Davy, a frustrated commuter, set up www.traindelays.co.uk to make it easy for all. Register here for free with details of your route, and every time you report your train is delayed the site will e-mail you a form to fill out to make your claim. This is a brilliant service.

To provide it, Davy had to collect data for 20 or so operating companies, and relies on contributors to report delays. Davy himself gets back almost 20% of his monthly season ticket in refunds and you can do the same. In London, if your Tube journey is delayed by more than 15 minutes there are online forms for refunds at the Transport for London site tinyurl.com/y7jjwm , and for refunds on prepaid Oyster cards which are lost or stolen there is help at https://sales.oystercard.com .

CARS

There was a time when the faults of a particular model of car were acknowledged in one country but were all but impossible to find out about in another. No longer. For example, the European New Car Assessment Programme (www.euroncap.com ), which conducts independent safety tests, makes it easy to discover how safe your car would be in a crash.