worse than selling damaged goods, are people that intentionally derail/hijack threads.
IMO we live in an age of very little respect. (as can be seen here with intentional thread hijacking).
All bike shops will have employees that will not respect the Items that a future customer will purchase. This isn't just Trek, but Specialized, Cannondale, Giant, etc... or any of those shops that also sell Surly/Salsa/Soma/AllCity etc...
As for Trek, I think their quality is low. Trek also owns Electra and I have seen serious quality issues with Electra.
As for the following 'quote' whatever happened to the era of you damage it, you buy it? Respect isn't the only thing that is going to hell, Morals are too it seems.
So, what do you expect them to do with the line of bikes a kid knocked over while dad was buying his new bike, which all picked up minor nicks and scrapes? Sell them all at used for a substantial discount?