I think the key difference here is that no one believed Tracy was "just another sales rep". If that were the case Tracy wouldn't have been added to this conversation by other people. Everyone was saying "just contact Tracy" as far back as the first page of this thread.
There was confusion about their role, probably because we're used to interacting with companies where there is a manager or person in authority you can escalate to. We're not used to sales reps becoming the public face of a company with no oversight.
I don't think Tracy is obligated to make clarifications on all of the forums he frequents, but I think we should stop beating up on
@violetv. They're clearly in a bad situation and made incorrect assumptions, but so did a lot of us.
Also it's their thread so we can leave but I don't think we can force them to talk about something else.