We're the goddamn Internet!

Today I received a call from a customer. This is nothing new, it happens about 15 or so times a day. I open with my usual greeting and ask for his User ID. He informs me that he doesn't have one, but he just has a quick question. I explain that a few months back we began to require that everyone seeking assistance with our division register for a User ID. It was at this point that the customer decided to become entertaining, "Look, I just have a simple question. I've already spent 30 minutes navigating your phone tree!
(As an aside, if it takes you 30 minutes to navigate our phone tree, you have no business attempting to resell our equipment. The amount of brain damage you would have to have suffered to not be able to navigate our phone tree would have left you in an assisted care home.)
He continues, "Everyone I've talked to has been giving me surveys for sales and no answers!"
The line in which he came in indicates that at most he has spoken to one other person. We have a division within our company that handles routing the incoming calls. You say, "I need presales help on a wireless device." and they send your call off to my group.
Again, I inform him that we are REQUIRED to get a User ID. If he doesn't have one, the registration process can be completed in under 5 minutes. This further angers him, "I'm ready to have my client send back the equipment ordered from your company if you don't assist me on this!"
Again I tell him that, while that's unfortunate, I cannot help him without a user ID. He asks for my manager. Outside Voice was nowhere to be found, so I spoke to McFly. McFly understood the complaint and had me escalate it to one of our technical superiors, Rocket Science.
Rocket Science gets the call from me and proceeds to give the customer the same run down, "We MUST have a User ID from you, or at least an email!"
The customer shot back, "And become one of your marketing targets? NO! I'm not interested in giving you any of my information!"
"We WON'T send you ANY materials. We don't need to market. Our marketing is not done through the User registration site."
"I am going to have my customer send everything he ordered back to you!"
"That's unfortunate, but without a User ID or at least an Email, I can't help you," Rocket Science said cooly.
The customer had had enough, now he bared his teeth, "Look, I run a local ISP. I run SEVERAL websites. I deal with MANY investors! If you do not assist me without collecting my information your company name will NEVER be mentioned in a good light around my investors or clients!"
I was still on conference but had my headset muted. This proved to be a boon as I blurted out, "And why would we care? Maybe you missed it, but we're the goddamn Internet!"
Now, I need to come clean with you people. We're a large company. A VERY large company. We boast an annual revenue of $35 BILLION as of 2007. We're partnered with all of the largest telcos in the world. Our equipment makes up an estimated 70% of most of the physical infrastructure of what is considered "the Internet". What do all these numbers mean?*

WE DON'T CARE IF YOU TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS NOT TO BUY FROM US.

Your paltry $5K will not even amount to a drop in the bucket. While you may turn your back, we'll keep selling our gear to the telcos that lease their lines to you to run your pissant, backwater ISP. Hell, one day you may lease a couple of T1s, maybe even a DS3! There's a very likely chance that you'll be leasing these from a provider that will issue you a gateway. Chances are, that gateway will be our product. So, Irate Customer, you can abandon us. That's fine. We won't abandon you.
Every ping you attempt will likely pass through something we had a hand in.
Every traceroute will touch something branded by my company.
Almost every packet of data you send anywhere will be forced to interact with our devices.

You can argue if we're moral. You can argue if we're just a greedy corporation. Both are equally valid questions and answers can be had for both sides of the argument.
The thing to remember is this: We don't need you, but you need us.

*It also means that you can't really name drop with us. Telling me, "This is a bid for a multi-million dollar company, if that makes any difference!" will only result in me informing you that no, indeed, it doesn't make a difference.