Well, the good news is that our Area Manager believes we did everything we could for the customer and that, at worst, the whole thing was a miscommunication.
So, we’ve hammered out some new guidelines for the sale of display model laptops- basically, we’ll remove all our Point of Sale screensavers and passwords etc and make sure we create the first user account with a generic name like “Laptop” or “Computer” when we set the computer up initially for display. If the customer wants to do a full system restore, we’ll tell them how to do it, but it will need to be something they do themselves unless they specifically request otherwise.
That way, we don’t end up having to spend 45 minutes doing a complete system restore for people that may not appreciate it, but if the customer asks, we can do it in-store and they can pick their laptop up when it’s done.
Our store manager isn’t actually a bad bloke, but sometimes he gets a bit carried away with “Process” and other Corporate Buzzwords Du Jour. He’s a better golfer than I am, though. 