Customer Service - 1 - Comet Style

I was talking to a friend of mine this morning. His ten month old TV, purchased from Comet, had started to "play-up". After ringing the Comet service phone a couple of times and hanging on for about ten minutes on each occasion listening to terrible music, he abandoned the effort and went into the Comet store where he had purchased the set. There were two females behind the Service Desk, one was on the phone and the other deliberately turned around as she saw him approaching and started dealing with some obviously very urgent important matter on a desk with her back turned towards him. After a while, the other female came off the phone and disappeared into the office. Somewhat put out by this attitude, my friend asked in a very loud voice whether it would be possible to see the manager, but was informed by the female, still with her back towards him, that he wasn't available (presumably he too was dealing with some other very important matter). However, in due course another female appeared who introduced herself as the supervisor. Avoiding the temptation of asking why she was not supervising, my friend explained the problem, and requested that she ring the service department on his behalf as he was unwilling to either spend any more on phone calls or continue to listen to the awful music.
Having countered "That's not possible", with "I'll bring in the TV and demand a refund under the sale of goods legislation", an appointment was eventually made for the Service Technician to come to and sort it out.

But why was all this hassle necessary? Do they really think that if they ignore problems that they will go away?