The 3rd tier partners and or hyper market treat these products and procedure around it as regular commodities. They will not understand the difference of software/license/support etc..

Actually this is what the hyper business is all about, to push the numbers and quantities...and role the ball to the 3rd tier partner to support and the cycle goes never ending....unfortunately

Coming back to the problem you faced, the support center MUST have to give you your system as you bought..i can understand your data is not coming under the cover.

Secondly, they should pre install the O/S for you or at least be nice enought to give you the media/cd to do it your self and then you can register online using ur pre stuck key.

Sorry to advise this, but you just have to be bit noisy and try always to reach to the higher ups etc....you will get your problem solved,.

Good luck