Hierarchy, Subverted

Was reading the recent post by Cynthia Price on the GM Fastlane blog. (hat tip: nevon)

Down in the comments were two items that stood out:

Mary Freund: "Dear Mr.Lutz: I am a G.M. employee. I work in Doraville , GA. Please put a hybrid engine in our product!!!"

Clarence Erickson: "As a GM employee I have noticed that sometimes the dealers don't treat even me right. My wife also had a few rough visits where I had to intervene...Perhaps we should work on this a little more. They do tend to treat people like sheep at times and there is the leftover perception from the bygone days that the dealer service department will work you over every time."

Things I'd love to know the answer to:

1) How many (5? 15?) organizational levels exist within GM between the execs doing the blogging (Cynthia Price and Bob Lutz) and the internal GM folks (Mary and Clarence) who are using this public forum to give the execs direct feedback?

2) How long would it take for that feedback to be shared upward using pre-existing internal communications mechanisms?

3) What would be the likelyhood of a response using the internal mechanisms in the pre-blog days? And if there was a response, how long would it take to get to get back to Mary and Clarence?