It usually means high street or town/city centre stores,not the airport/train station branches.
As to faulty discs,I had a cd once which refused to play,it started skipping in the same spot,behaved the same on two different players,when I looked there was some kind of dirty mark on it which was causing the problem,careful cleaning wouldn't fix it so I emailed the paper. About three days later a brown paper package with an apology slip and three copies turned up in the mail!