Someone ought to start a support line for people to help them get out of abusive relationships.

I don't see any justifiable reason for not treating the NRT-EWR segment as a one-way upgrade. Seems like the staff is trying hard to invent silly rationalizations for an IT glitch which might be trying to process this as a HKG-EWR upgrade and balking at the non CO segment. Your best bet is to call several times and hope you get someone competent who knows what to do.

If this is actually CO policy, I will leave it to the aplogists here to invent silly rationalizations.