Dead battery out of the box

Purchased phone at Walmart 2 days ago. Installed battery pack and let it charge in cradle for 24 hours. One of the handsets never came on. I did some troubleshooting and determined that the NiMH battery pack was dead. Ok, I figured that kind of thing happens. The easiest thing would be to take the unit back to Walmart for an exchange but first I decided to test out the support line. I called them, reported the problem. The technician was intelligent enough not to give me some stupid run around. However, I was asked to send the whole unit to their service depot. I asked for a call tag and they said they don't pay for shipping. First, I think it should be the manufacturer's responsibility to pay for shipping when a unit fails out of the box. Then, requiring to ship the whole unit in because the battery pack is dead is ridiculous.
As far as the other problem people are experiencing that are most likely firmware related I have to say GE's support is lacking grossly! Why does every other company but GE have a Support section on their website? Why doesn't GE allow firmware updates through the USB interface on the phone? That is commonly done in electronics today. Kind of like a BIOS update you can perform on your computer motherboard. They tried to tout the phone as having the latest and greatest technology yet failed to incorporate common "useful" features.