That's setting up a straw man. The complaints aren't about the existence of the rule, but about the lack of any official announcement of it, and the existence of official announcements that indicate there'd be no problem with the itinerary.

And if you've ever been in this predicament, you'll understand well and good how difficult it can be to get accurate information on stopover rules.

I recently booked a flight that made a stopover for a couple of hours in a not particularly welcoming country. Did I need a visa for sitting in the airport for 90 minutes while the cabin was cleaned and the plane refueled? Official sites, social media and Timatic weren't completely assuring. The airline's local office didn't know, and they contacted Beijing, who also didn't know, though no doubt someone from the airline would know at check-in. In the end, no problem, but the concern obviously created some tension.

It's so easy to point the finger at the OP saying well, she just didn't try hard enough to get the right information. But that underestimates the difficulty of getting the right information, especially when the official sites provide no clue to it at all.

I'll stand by my earlier advice: unless there are time constraints, Americans and Canadians should forget the hoops and loopholes of TWOV and get the ten-year visa.