This does not surprise me one bit. I once asked the "financial advisor" at my work in the dept that handled the 403B accounts (like a 401K) what the fees involved were for the accounts I held and she told me it doesn't matter. About 2 years later they started putting those same fees on the statements due to a new federal law requiring them to tell us. Of course it matters!!!
Another time when I handled my mom's estate and she had left a small account written as a trust account for her four grandchildren the banker told me he would just cut a check for each of my 2 children and then they could give half of their checks to their cousins if they wanted to. He was the estate banker at the bank.
So many other stories like this.