You're blaming Campy for problems created by you and your LBS. Campy can't force anyone to stock their product. Your LBS chooses not to stock Campy product and you refuse to spend a fraction of the time you'd spend driving to the store to shop online. You've been inconvenienced by your own lack of forsight. I either have spare parts, a spare bike, or both so I'm never out of service.

Someone in the chain between Campy and the US retailer did make a big mistake when they raised the prices to US sellers by 50%, starting with the '09 product, in October of '08. I don't know who's pocketing the money, but European dealers were selling '08 and '09 groups for about the same price in Euros or GBP. Two years later, you can finally find some US based stores with nearly identical prices on groups, but most of the individual parts are priced quite a bit higher.

Lickton's and Texas Cycle sport are two decent US sources.