Hello HelenM and welcome to FlyerTalk.

The RTW rules are complicated and not everyone understands them very well. It may be a simple misunderstanding.

This thread is full of examples where we, or employees at the airline, have not understood the rules properly. Sometimes that works to our advantage!

It is an unfortunate fact of dealing with these itineraries.

As others have said, if a stopover was transformed into a connection or vice versa, that would be a change to a ticketed point.