Pets.com moves part of litter to Midwest

The online pet store today said it has opened a new customer service call center in Greenwood, Ind. The San Francisco-based company has already relocated the majority of its customer service work force to Indiana, where rent, wages and other operating costs are much cheaper than in the Bay Area. Pets.com's headquarters remains in San Francisco.

Pets.com is not alone in its cost-cutting efforts, which come at a crucial time for most struggling dot-coms that have been slammed by the April market correction and have been scrambling to increase profits and regain investor confidence.

Several e-tailers, including Egghead.com and PlanetRx, have recently moved some of their operations away from Silicon Valley to lower-cost areas such as Washington state and Tennessee.

Pets.com's new customer call center is expected to handle the majority of its customer contacts. The company, which believes the move will help shorten its path to profitability, plans to maintain a small customer service call center within its San Francisco headquarters.