My guess is that you and they were dealing with a franchised/licensee location rather than a corporate location. So, "local Policy" always trumps, no matter how unfair or fraudulent. Corporate has little control over such things.

I would highly doubt that it had anything to do with the booking source (ie, nonrev).

Also, in the case of the E12000 person you may not have all the information. You may have no way of knowing all the facts.