Q: Purchased items missing

Many of the items I've purchased on iTunes are missing when I click on the "Purchased" section in my account in the iTunes store.    I'm talking about hundreds of dollars of videos that are now gone.   When I go to the iTunes store and look them up, they show that I've never paid for them.   I don't want to have to purchase them again.    I also don't want to have to pay iTunes $29 just to find out where videos I've paid for have disappeared!    Anyone else out there have this problem.   Any ideas how to contact Apple without going through tech support to resolve this issue?