Whoever Jennifer is, she's not here.

"I'm sorry," Allor says, grinning. "I'm in a call center and we can't transfer. But I'd be happy to help you."

Americans dialing for customer service are increasingly being connected to workers like Allor — call-center agents without call centers.

The move to home-based agents, working from bedrooms and kitchen tables across the country, started as a trickle in the late 1990s. But it is picking up speed as a low-cost alternative to traditional call centers.

It's not as cheap as offshoring, the shift of operations to countries with pools of low-paid but well-educated workers. But companies bent on cutting costs also see home agents as a way to avoid some of the consumer complaints common to overseas call centers.

More than 100,000 U.S. workers now field customer-service calls from home, according to a recent report by consulting firm IDC. Over the next two years, one of every 10 U.S. call centers is likely to shift at least partly to home-based agents, according to another report by consultant Gartner Inc.

Some dub it "homeshoring."

Call in an order to 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. for Mother's Day, and there's a good chance it will be handled by a home-based agent. The same is true for consumers calling The Vermont Teddy Bear Co. or to book a room at a Wyndham International Inc. hotel.

Retailer Office Depot Inc. is closing 10 of its 12 U.S. call centers this year, replacing 900 full-time agents with home-based agents. They include Allor, an agent for Plano, Texas-based Working Solutions Inc., one of several virtual call-center firms.

Getting rid of call-center buildings saves money on real estate. Most of the home-based agents work part-time or as independent contractors, so employers don't pay for health insurance and benefits.

In addition, home-based agents for most companies pay for their own equipment. And companies say the workers are better qualified and more content than those at traditional call centers.

"We are actually realizing some pretty good double-digit savings from this," says Julian Carter, the Office Depot executive in charge of the call center switch. The company expects savings of $15 million a year.

It's not just the cost savings, though.

Fielding calls with home agents "gives you the ability to staff with local people who speak the language well, that have the same culture, the same trends, that basically live in the same place," said Esteban Kolsky, a Gartner analyst. "That's very appealing to most customers."

Some of the biggest advocates of virtual call centers are home-based agents. Customers of 1-800-Flowers.com, for example, have no way of knowing that when agent Barbara Leeper-Zilk picks up their call at her home in Littleton, Colo., she's often doing her laundry between calls.

"I get up at 10 to 6, let the dogs out, grab a bottle of water, go upstairs and turn on the computer and I'm at work," says Leeper-Zilk, one of nearly 4,000 agents working for Alpine Access Inc., a Golden, Colo.-based virtual call center firm.

Leeper-Zilk first signed on for extra spending money. Many other home agents are mothers of young children who work during school hours, and older people who want to work limited hours or pick up extra income.

"If I was to have a desk job and was required to sit seven out of eight hours, that would be too much for me," said Pam Brackett, who takes calls from her home in Bellingham, Mass., and whose daily routine is limited by severe rheumatoid arthritis. "If it wasn't for doing this, I wouldn't be doing anything."

The virtual call center concept has been around since the 1990s, but companies were reluctant to give up the managerial control and supervision of a brick-and-mortar call center.

One of the earliest adopters was JetBlue Airways Inc., in 2000. The airline now has a 900-agent network of work-at-home reservation agents, all in the Salt Lake City area.

Companies frequently listen in on calls to ensure agents follow the rules.

"This is not alternative childcare. This is a special work environment — no kids, no pets, zero tolerance," said Tim Houlne, CEO of Working Solutions. "We can't afford for the dog to start barking when the FedEx man comes to the door."

Many of the agents work 15 to 20 hours a week. But some have fashioned it into a financial mainstay, sometimes juggling multiple accounts.

Take Allor, the suburban Dallas agent. She switches from taking orders for printer cartridges and legal pads to booking hotel reservations, timed to make the most of both the morning rush by office workers to place orders, and the midday pickup in people making travel plans.

Allor usually works 50 to 55 hours a week and says she earned about $27,000 last year, when she worked fewer hours.