Well, I'm in retail and I tend to look at this as in the time the lbs spent in haggling about $8 they could have just untangled the chain and gained a customer for future purchases. Instead they have likely lost a customer for ever. Their labor, overhead etc was not impacted at all by this, but they lost an opportunity to gain a customer ... not to mention the bad word of mouth mxu is spreading locally at his school etc. instead of the good word of mouth if they just fixed it. Sure they didn't owe him anything ... but they missed a no cost opportunity to gain a customer.