I'm trying to make changes at the end of a *A rtw terminating in the US. There are very strict stopover and transfer limits once I'm back in NA. I'm being told by an agent that I can't book the tail end I desire because I have too many transfers even though some are stopovers.

The specific example (sfo and sjc count as same for rtw)

rno-lax....rtw....fra-sfo stopover sjc-ord-rdu stopover rdu-ord-sjc-(<24hours(transfer))-sfo-rno

Note - I'm nowhere near the mileage or overall stopover limit (star1)

The agent insisted that rdu counted as a transfer putting me at 4 with a limit of three.

The bottom line - does a stopover also count against my transfer total?