So, Julius von dem Bussche, I promised I'd invite you. Here we go.
I have raised an OSS message to SAP concerning the system behaviour described in my opening post and got knocked back by the global support á la "the current system behaviour makes sense and is sufficient and we won't change it, sorry, good day". A calm (I'm TAKING PAINS OVER IT...) inquiry from me after that with perfectly logical and persuading arguments and detailed proposals how to improve the system (which I could charge good money for) gets copy-pasted to death with nearly the exact same litany followed by SAP Note #12 (this is even worse than #11 since it claims the overly competent global support provided me with a solution, whereas they did point me to a BADI for a crippled workaround I already thought of, "THANKS BRO I can read the sap.help and IMG documentation too!").
I'm not contributing on the SCN forums for others sake, though others do benefit from my expertise and I'm pretty sure I do deflect a nice lot of questions from the apparently overchallenged global support with my activity on the travel management forums. Although most of the people I help are grateful, SAP obviously is not.
Maybe I should print out SAP Note #11 and #12 on Flyers, spread them and call myself "Senior Consultant".
Bah, Fiddlesticks.