Seems like these are different situations under the same support rep. I feel bad for the rep honestly, they're probably not allowed to do any more and I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up taking the fall for this.
Support reps are always allowed to do more. There's always a path of escalation that ends at the CEO. If a Dell-partnered senior exec (like from Fry's or Best Buy) was having a terrible customer support experience trying to RMA their Dell device, you can bet that if it didn't get resolved ASAP that there'd be a Dell exec personally flying out a new device and repairing their business ties in-person.
It just sucks for us little guys, because the only way to apply the same pressure is with publicity.
Just this week I went nuclear with a particularly bad customer service experience. I'd been messed around trying to buy a Razer Blade Stealth which claimed same day shipping. Three days later I had no shipping confirmation and no response from customer support.
The day after tracking down the founder's email address a laptop was shipped FedEx direct from the factory.
The rep may be limited in what s/he can personally do and/or authorize, but I'm guessing it's not Dell policy that they a.) tell the customer that they are the manager and there's no one else, higher up, that they can talk to or b.) respond to legal threats with the equivalent of "come at me, bro".
I had a rep tell me a), they were the final arbiter and nobody to escalate to, quite a few years back. Was before they reorganized Dell Outlet... scratch & ding was a separate choice from refurbished. I chose the former and received the latter, a 2 years used tower. After his declaration I ran data recovery and started sharing my findings and quoting the rep with random operators when I called back and they asked for my ticket number. First couple forwarded me back to my miserable operator, but through persistence the 'right' person was found and I had a brand new replacement overnighted the next day. If memory serves, there is no longer any designation to choose, if it's from Dell Outlet you may(probably) or may not(less probable) get a refurb.
It just sucks for us little guys, because the only way to apply the same pressure is with publicity.