Yeah, I recall that too. Could be a policy, could be a case of passing on ad hoc rules - staff tends to make up their own best-practices if rules are too complicated or poorly communicated. Hard to know which.

Gate practice is clearly different from HQ practice (which has access to more tools) in any case.
I've been at gate overhearing passenger complaining/refusing to take an upgrade and staff saying "there is nothing we can do about it, it is controlled from Helsinki" indicating HQ follows a policy which makes absolutely no sense at the gate.