I want to begin by saying: I'm posting this more to vent than to receive answers. (I'm not sure there are any answers at this point.)

...

I'm in my final year of a British PhD program, though I'm finishing it from home (North America).

Since moving home over a year ago, my supervisor has become nearly impossible to get a hold of. My supervisor was active and interested in me / my research when I was in the UK, but now that I'm out of sight, I'm also out of mind.

About every 2 months I contact my supervisor, asking her if we can talk via e-mail, skype, phone, etc. (I'll pay the phone bill!) The usual response is something along the lines of: "Yes, that sounds good. Let's do it next week." I immediately respond by either asking what day and time works best for the supervisor, or by suggesting a day and time. Either way, there's never a response. I then follow up with another email, asking again re: day / time or suggesting another day / time.

Because this approach doesn't seem to work, I've tried calling her at her university office, but she's never picked up and there's no answering machine.

So in the past year, I've received feedback on my work from her once, when I flew to the UK and visited her at her office (though that time she responded to my emails and agreed on a day / time to meet). The feedback that I received was helpful, and she's clearly read the entire chapter, but now that I'm almost finished a draft of the whole thesis, I'm wondering how / if I'll be able to get her feedback on the thesis as a whole. (So far I've only received feedback on 1 chapter out of 5.)

While the obvious solution would be to switch supervisors, I've already done that once (my first supervisor moved universities), and I'd rather not switch this late in the game. Also, she does seem genuinely interested in me / my work, and she's one of the biggest names in my field. And she tends to take things personally. And there's no one else at the university who knows the field well enough to give feedback on my thesis (other than correcting spelling, grammar, logic).

Several things frustrate me about this situation.
1) I know her feedback would improve my thesis
2) I'm quite sure she's giving feedback to her full-time, non-distance students
3) I'm paying huge tuition fees, but I'm not sure what I'm getting in exchange (other than the university accreditation of my degree, when I finish). I have virtually no access to the library (their online resources are quite poor), and virtually no access to my supervisor.

The only things that gives me hope about this situation are:
1) I feel like I know where I'm going with the thesis, and that I can probably finish a reasonable draft on my own
2) I plan to do everything it takes to get feedback from my supervisor on the thesis as a whole, when the first draft is finished. If this means e-mailing her every week, calling her every few weeks, flying to the UK, I'll do it.

It just sucks to think that over a 1

[continued]

It just sucks to think that over a 1 1/2 year span (by the time the thesis is entirely drafted), I'll probably have only received feedback from my supervisor twice. (My previous supervisor met with me about once every month or two, but didn't believe in commenting on students work. He thought it was like holding the student's hand.)

*sigh*

Hi Coffee, I must say this sounds very unfair on your part. I'm not sure why your sup would leave you high and dry, especially when, as you suggest, international calls/skype/IMs are all so easy nowadays. You are still paying tuition fees I imagine??!

You're right that there's little advice to be offered; no one can go out and cuff your supervisor to her phoneline, although, I would be tempted to write her a candid email explaining this pattern of nonresponse, the amount of times you have tried to contact her, and the fact that no-one has read much of your work. I would also be very inclinded to CC in the head of dept, although, if you wanted to be "fairer", you could ask her if she would prefer you to move supervisors, or if she thought distance was a problem to dicuss with the departmental head, and see what she says, if anything. Where I study we have DORPs (Directors of research), I'm not sure if everyone has this, but my DORP would be the person I would go to if I had any problems with my supervisor. You could also try approaching somebody like this via email, nothing accusatory, just a nudge toward how worried this makes you feel.