@mcdonna - I appreciate that you may have found a workaround that happens to work in your particular case and I am happy for you. But this cannot be offered as a general, safe, guaranteed "solution" in all possible cases. The support response you got, whilst I am sure well-meaning (and basically they would say that) is wwaayy too vague to have any meaning at all.
It's sad when you see something like WordPress go the way of "products" from from traditional monolithic corporations. Eventually everything has to end up conforming to their view of how the world should operate and they forget their real world users who made them popular in the first place. The thing is you shouldn't have to have had to do what you did - there is absolutely no good reason for you having been put in that situation.