We don't have a monopoly on clever CS people =). I'm pretty sure Dropbox and Box.net have lots of smart people working for them as well. (In fact, I have friends at Dropbox)
I'm not an expert in that specific bug, so I won't speculate publicly - but the memory issue is something that has seen steady commits over time from various people who are plugging away diligently at it. It's a bit of a moving target, and there is a tradeoff. The customer's case is a bit of an edge case, and at the extreme end of things.
In terms of the customer support side of things, I don't know all the specifics of what happened, so I won't comment further. However, my details are on HN, so feel free to PM if you want me to see what I can do internally.