It may not be an exagerration. It may be really so. DL has been really limiting what its agents can do lately, and seems to be monitoring any ticketing that is overriding the automatic price calculation (as was done here in the end) very closely (that most agents really can't do - they used to be able to, but can't anymore, not without, from my experience, some sort of a one-time access code to do that being granted to them, or ones that can (there are some that can, usually IXXRES and IRRRES) simply will refuse to do as it may jeopardize their job if someone later determines that they should not have made the call to do it, even though it was doing the right thing for the customer). Once in a similar case I had someone later notice the ticket and remark that they were going to follow-up with the ticketing agent about it and that the person who ticketed was in "real trouble" for having so done. Not sure what came of it, but I felt really bad for the agent who did the right thing for the customer (really the only thing that could have been done, there it was due to a 5 hour schedule change) then apparently being in trouble for doing so.