I agree that B&N's CS is really awful. My latest issue with them is that they claimed they linked my kids club account and membership number together in the store (took forever too) but I found out weeks later that they didn't. So I didn't get credited for several larger purchases that I purchased in the meantime. Of course, it took them forever to figure out what was the problem when I was on the phone with them. I asked them if I could be compensated somehow because I was told in the stoer that it was linked correctly. They said they had no way of retroactively crediting the account and could not compensate me in any way since the store made the mistake. Told me to call the store. So I called the store and they said that they would have to check with someone and get back to me. Of course they never got back to me.
It wasn't that much money and not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but CS was just so unapologetic over the situation. Do they really have no authority to just say, we're so sorry about the mistake, we'll send you a $xx amount gift card to compensate? Other companies (Amazon, Boden) does that. Even Borders gave me extra borders bucks when a gift card for a return got lost in the mail.