I had a very similar experience with BD customer service after I bent a Z-pole on a section hike. Was essentially told that BD warranty covered manufactures defects but not normal usage. My rationale to the service rep that if something breaks in normal usage IT IS a manufacture's defect....!
Was told sorry, no warranty. So I researched BD on the financial web sites to establish the names of all the corporate leaders. From there I reviewed the email naming convention of the customer service rep and duplicated it using the BD leaderships names.
I had a responses back from the CEO, COO, CFO, etc... within about 2 hours. Had a new pole by the end of the week. YMMV but worked for me.