You unfortunately got a particularly ill-informed, poorly-trained agent, as everything he/she told you is wrong. In those circumstances, the normal advice is HUACA but one understands that you might be reluctant to do that after waiting on hold for so long.

'Is this level of difficulty normal?' I don't think so. I've booked 10 RTWs in the last 20 years and I've never had the level of frustration that you describe. They often don't call back and sometimes they don't reply to e-mail as promptly as one would wish but in general things have gone smoothly enough for us in dealing with CX, JL, AA and BA.

Good luck.