5 legged dog...
I deal with customer service or customer support quite often, totally different industry and function, but the interworkings of "I have a problem, can you help me fix it?" relationship with customers is pretty universal.
After I read this thread, I was left with this thought:
It's great when people try to help with a problem, but a dog can't walk with 5 legs. Sometimes, more people working on a problem isn't really better.
I have the luxury of not really caring, but without having access to their PM's or the emails and calls between either of them and the Nikon mothership, it seems like Bman tried to help inform miketodd that the CS rep he initially spoke with was incorrect. In fairness, that probably should have been the end of his involvement. Unless he's trying to pull some strings and deviate from standard company policy - that a lifetime warranty converts to a 6month policy on warranty replacement items - there really shouldn't have been any more involvement at that point from him.
I don't personally care if the guy made a tongue-in-cheek joke about a "intentional accident," it's a long ways between joking about that and actually trying to defraud a company, and the thread until that point had no information (maybe bman did in PM?) to suggest that the warrantiable issue was something a guy could purposefully replicate.