this is highly debatable issue., since you claim to be in services industry you must be knowing the pressures a Shop keeper suffer. Specially for people in technical / counter sales.
That is one reason people establish call centres for customer support.
Your approach may not be right to place your query and after 3 minutes wasting on phone they declined to help, reason: across counter customer is more valuable to them.
- this what i can ascertain after only reading your complaint and knowing the pressure for counter sales
am sorry i do not support your whinning just because somebody declined to help you over phone.