This guy wasn't giving bullshit. What he was saying was, as far as I could tell, accurate, but it was relevant only to an advanced level of mass data transfer. The question wasn't about anything of the sort, it was simply about this user entering her own old password into the new system, and, since this incident predated the ubiquity of password security level gatekeeping, the answer would have been "Yes, you may." The problem was that the tech guy couldn't imagine anyone needing to ask this question.

Another case I've frequently come across is responding to "Do X" with "How do I do it?" which generates a long discussion of complex software issues, when what the question meant was "Which keys do I press on the keyboard?"