Good support staff ignore the rules. Somebody dumber figures out that rules are being circumvented, and before you know it it's exactly as the parent poster described: lock out the "Next" button until all rules are followed!

[edit] Might as well relate an anecdote:

When I got my MacBook Pro about 2 years ago I had it built with some custom options (glossy screen and bigger HDD, FYI), which made it a "custom order" in Apple's system. It took a little longer to ship, but anyways.

So over Xmas the MBP bit the dust, and I had to get a replacement from Apple. They offered up a new unibody MacBook Pro, and since the stock model matched the specs on my custom-built one, I was to get a stock, new, MBP.

This was going to take about a week, they told me. I had an Apple Store some 20 minutes away from my home, and I asked if I could just bring in my broken laptop and walk home with a new one. Less hassle for everyone. Nope. According to my support rep, this is allowed if my machine was a standard config to begin with, but their system would not allow a replacement order to be placed if the system was custom!

Rules sometimes suck.

Good support staff eventually move out of support roles. Very few companies value support employees and consequently, very few support employees feel obliged to help the company and their customers.

Good level 1 support staff are trained to follow scripts to reduce the cost of customer service. Their job is not to think or get creative.

Ideally their script should have an exception or a way to bump to a supervisor who has the ability to make decisions themselves.