very nice post! This type of “personal-contact” remember me the one that we have here in Brazil, specially in the mobile phone market. It’s almost impossible to cancel your plan. You explain to one employee by phone that you want to cancel, this employee transfer your call to another one. You need to explain everything again. They keep asking why and why, trying to sell you another plan. When you convince this second employee, they transfer your call to a 3rd one. And this routine keeps going. You need to talk to, at least, 5 persons. And you can just do that by phone. Not at the stores.

In relation to your email exchange, it remembered me the email exchanges exposed by The Pirate Bay, a bittorrent tracker (http://thepiratebay.org/legal). It’s hilarious to read their email exchange with the legal department of big companies like Microsoft, Eletronic Arts, Apple, Sega, Dreamworks and etc.