Chalk it up to corporate geniuses and bureaucrats that feel they have to protect us from ourselves.
It's not to protect the customer, it's to limit the company's legal liability. These policies are not developed arbitrarily by some bureaucrat, they're on the advice of corporate legal counsel. The one policy issue that lawyers drive home to their corporate clients is consistency. They are scared to death that a witness will get on the stand and admit to deviating from the policy.
Thus, the rigidity of such policies.
Paul
