Agreed - it might be the policy of the company for record keeping purposes to ensure the financials tally up at the end of the year.

Sure, it might...but your financials will also look bad if you slowly bleed customers through bad customer service. Again, I think this is an opportunity for organizational change - even if the employee can't solve my problem right then, he should bring up the inflexibility of his system with his employers and they should try to change it.

That said - and as many commenters have pointed out - the employee probably wasn't empowered to make or suggest any changes to the business. :\

True - I agree. But yeah, many cases we're faced with people who aren't empowered to make decisions and the people at the top sometimes probably don't know about these issues. All of them get squashed by middle management. So, maybe your bringing of attention the problem might get some eyes :)