I see your point, it probably has more to do with culture than hiring.  The employees (at all levels) do appear to have done what was required of them with a friendly tone.<p>Where I think this becomes a hiring problem is that I would expect that somewhere along the way that Barnes &#38; Noble would have hired somebody who would actually do what they were hired to do - Customer Service.  In my opinion, this issue was never resolved and therefore every representative who worked on this case did NOT actually do their job.<p>No representative (regardless of the process) should promise a call back if they don't actually intend to follow through.  If Barnes &#38; Noble had hired correctly, the system wouldn't have failed this miserably.