Well, unless OP muddled the chronology like s/he muddled the description of the assignment, I guess they don't realize that the rejected shop (whether rightly or wrongly) rendered null and void the promise of the other shop. Why would ACL give them a higher-dollar shop when they had just blown the lower-dollar shop?
And is it accidental or deliberate that they don't bother to mention if they did or did not follow the instruction to "place the order with the bartender" and only then could they accept an offer of a table near the bar?
It still appears that instructions were not followed, maybe not the instructions another shopper posted for a bar-only shop, but the instructions that applied to the "bar preferred" shop that was rejected.
Either way, it was totally inappropriate to call the schedulers "shady" for reneging on a promise after OP reneged on *their* promise to follow instructions.
And if they did follow instructions (even though leaving out the detail of whom they placed the order with in describing the incident here) then it appears they did not clearly communicate the details to the scheduler, or the scheduler was having a bad day and misunderstood, and if that was the case, upon explaining properly the actual sequence of events (couldn't get seat at bar, waited X amount of time, placed the order with the bartender, then accepted offer of table near the bar) ACL should have conceded the point and approved the report. If the shop was actually conducted correctly and ACL refused to pay, shame on them. But we have no information here establishing that the shop was, in fact, conducted correctly.
And I'm out of popcorn and no longer interested in helping OP learn from their mistakes.
Time to build a bigger bridge.