+1 to your attitude RoB. People will remember you more for how you deal with your mistakes than the actual mistake itself.
I think I get what redbruce was trying to say - none of us should have to put up with piss-poor service, and wouldn't in other situations. Could you imagine not having your car for a week, because one of the dealer's mechanics quit and they hadn't even opened the bonnet for 4 days.
Take your Guide brake example - SRAM has known about this for ages. Are mtb brakes any less critical than brakes on a car? Arguably not. Yet if a car manufacturer finds a systematic problem with the brakes on a vehicle model, they get on the front foot, issue a recall and fix it at no cost to the owner (and probably at no cost to the dealer too). SRAM on the other hand chooses to ignore the problem and respond to customer complaints on an ad-hoc basis, have no replacement stock available and don't support the LBS by compensating them for their time to swap out faulty brakes. If the fix is as simple as replacing the lever internals (as it appears to be), why couldn't they issue these service kits to LBS so the issue could be fixed in a matter of days and compensate them for their labour? In other words, step up, own the issue, put corporate greed aside and act in the best interests of their customers.
I'm not suggesting that it's likely to get better any time soon, but why should we have to accept a relatively poor standard of service? And I think redbruce was suggesting that if we keep accepting this, like chocko does, it's never likely to improve?
BTW, I'm with you chocko, in that I'm not prone to raging at my LBS either; they are the ones caught between the customer and supplier in these situations. A retailer does need to take the good with the bad though - and that should go for the supplier as well.
