In the legal area, I could see for example that they discovered that they were incorrectly handling this "hidden" points purchase in their accounting, and that they have to fix the accounting issues before they can resume "selling" points in this way.

Or it could be that it was an imprecise explanation. Ie, it could be a technical problem with the "back engine" which drives both the website and whatever technique phone agents used to book cash + points reservations for you, despite claims above that it was a technical problem with the website itself.

Keep in mind that AFAIK there's only one other hotel program which does cash + points the same way (as a "hidden" way of buying points), and they developed that system a decade or two ago. So Choice may not have had much to go by when they implemented it, and may not have done it all correctly, but only discovered that recently.