( how did they respond?)
You know they didn't.
The point of that comment is to show first, my own frustration, but more importantly to engender resignation of the OPs intended course and acceptance of the way things work. (Which it seems you agree with.)
...and no one else seems to have issue with how it works..
Clearly the OP did, wanting to do things we normally did with tape based media, but can't do with tapeless due to it's poor design.