Agreed, but I guess its like alot of things, you don't know til you've tried. I had a friend who'd work the sales people in Circuit Cities in the past for all sorts of extra goodies when he'd make big ticket buys.
I think some of these Cabela's people know me like they're family, so I'm willing to maybe try a bit harder once I learn the jdaddy secret.
Simply find imperfection and grunt. In this case I would ask them if that is the best they could do, as you are concerned about it not having a warranty card and $400 is a lot to spend on a rod with no warranty, [insert whine here]. The only time I saw it done (by a friend) was on a smoker that had a crack in the ceramic and they took another 25% off. I do not remember there being any management involvement or anything like that.