While I'm so new to bicycling that I have yet to visit my LBS, this is a topic that cuts across all retail establishments. Some stores get complacent about the "service" part of customer service, even though that is exactly what is necessary to pull people back from internet shopping. It's not a problem limited to one niche.

This is my poor customer service story -
My husband had an insurance settlement a while back and we decided to splurge and upgrade our computers. We ended up walking out of the first place we went, and when I told the woman who had put the final nail in the coffin because of her poor customer service that she had just lost the store a $3000 sale, she shrugged. She shrugged. Apparently their profit margin was so great that $3000 wasn't worth the effort of an "I'm sorry", or even a "goodbye". $3000 to them wasn't worth the effort to talk.

So yeah, definitely not a localized problem.