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I was an operations manager for Borders, and I am not at all surprised by this.
The biggest problem is that the borders website and the borders store are separate entities. It wasn't until about a year ago that the book ordering process was brought in house. It used to be farmed out through amazon.com. They were losing a ton of money so they tried to start their own online retail site, but for some reason it is actually a separate company all together. It was done to try and recoup some of the loses from the in store ordering process. That attempted integration with online ordering was a total fiasco, and continues to be a failure. My best guess as to why it was done as a separate entity is because Borders was bankrupt when they implemented the program. They had to get another company that had developed a site similar to Barns and Noble's that was not a "live" site to rebrand themselves with the borders logo. It was the only way they could afford to do it, and it is the reason why you cannot get refunds for books ordered online in a Borders store.
I have had every kind of customer service issue you can imagine because of the ineptitude of the Borders online service. Try explaining to a very angry father why the copy of Tom Sawyer his 5th grade daughter ordered for her school's reading program accidentally ended up being a copy of the satanic bible. (I still believe it was done on purpose) When you combine the growing pains of the online company with the three different CEO changes, severe staffing and budget cut backs, and a general lack of communication it is a wonder anyone even bothered to take your calls.
The fact of the matter is that the borders store get NO credit for any sales related to the online site. (initially they were supposed to, based on a zip code proximity, but that idea was scrapped immediately.)
It is unfortunately not their jobs to keep track of anything related to the online stores, because the managers get no credit for any of the sales, even on the orders that are placed in the store. Most importantly, there is very little profit margin associated with the e readers, and none of the books that you buy to read on them will help the stores meet their sales goals.
As such, why should they know or care anything about them?
There is no incentive for the "brick and mortar" stores to help you.
However, they do take customer satisfaction surveys and customer care calls very seriously. The only way your concerns will be addressed is if you get a receipt from them with a survey on it. Everything you say on that survey will go straight to the store's general manager, and if it is bad enough the District manager as well.
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