Except you need to do it before charging back the past 6 months of purchases from the store. I doubt even going up a few levels of management can get that account unlocked after that. Even very big retailers have to treat chargebacks as an attack on their very ability to do business, since riding the 1% limit can be so hard. He's proven he's not a customer they can take money from, no matter the facts of the situation.

Once I read that line, my first thought was "chances are his account was locked by the fraud/risk department".