isack, you are way off here. honestly, you are doing exactly what you are complaining about. you are the only one ive heard say anything black and white on the subject. you claim zhawks' experience was proven wrong when CS came to answer. you say he has no idea what he is talking about. those are a lot more black and white than his very appropriate answer, "its not very significant". he didn't say it was a fact. stick around a while, and see how fun it is to quantify every post with "just to be clear, this is my opinion, not a fact". it would be ridiculous, it is to be assumed, unless otherwise stated.
simply put, CS's response was very vague. zhawks made an approximation - "not very significant" or whatever. how you can take the two and say one is right and one is wrong is beyond me. you know less about the subject than any party involved, yet you are fit to proclaim who is right and who is wrong? sadly, it just doesn't work that way.
it is easiest to understand if you think about it like this. the low level CS employee gets paid ****, is not very bright, and does not know this game well. you suggest it is arrogant for zhawks to think he knows more than these low level cs reps... quite literally, it is insane to think otherwise. its not even close.
its been a common theme since i started this game... people taking things from CS the wrong way. you have to recognize the audience, and the intent of the message. CS is not here to give vets the secrets to the game. they want to help people who understand the game *considerably less than they do* figure some things out. so, someone who doesn't fully understand the ramifications of what they are saying, is trying to give general advice to new players. i don't think they make it a high priority not to mislead us, either. but, its not all their fault. the community of coaches is plenty to blame. there are many examples of 1-2 liners from CS turning into a thread with several pages of theories and implications off those couple lines, often relying on as slight a detail as the choice of a single word. sweeping generalizations have been made that are fairly baffling when you go back and read the 2 liner that started it all.
the way i look at it is, the old fooled me once saying. CS gives poor, misleading information at times. it is what it is, given the state of business today, i don't think it is all that appalling. at this point, the responsibility falls on us, to protect ourselves with a wary eye. and, its so easy for a new (or old) coach to misplace their faith in low level CS responses, and take them too far - it is intuitive to expect them to know best, but often, it just isn't true. and I am totally serious when I say everybody who is telling you, that you are totally misjudging their response, is doing it for your own benefit.