The first few issues sound to me more like poor management in a particular location, rather than a global company policy. However, it could be that company incentives led to this such management initiatives.
Corporate pretty much let DM's run things the way the wanted and, and most DM's let store General Managers do the same (to a lesser extent). That combined with corporate providing tools to make it easy to drill down into meaningless metrics, and you ended up with employees encouraged to walk low margin customers in some stores, while in other stores that would get you fired.
Employees can provide helpful knowledge to customers in exchange for a wage. The ones who hawk PSP warranties are probably the worst customer advocates, yet aren't the ones being fired....
The helpful employees and loyal customers lose, corporate wins....