You are an a-hole Adam! LOL! j/k
Anyone who has been on here for any length of time knows how helpful you try to be, and knows you are anything but an a-hole. Sometimes people are on here just brain-storming ideas, and they may not be technically right. Hey, we're a bunch of geeks working with half the information in most cases. I am sure we all feel that if one of us posts something inaccurate, by all means, we should let one another know. That's how you learn.
I will challenge you on this point though

I got a call from a guy the other day who said the cards weren't going through (version 5.2-something, cards being processed over the Internet). My first step when I get a call like this is always to send them to the Back Office and try to run the card manually through the EDC interface. That just helps you isolate whether it's a back office issue or front of house. His card when through, which helps narrow things down tremdously.. that means EDC, edcsvr, the Internet, is all good. So, I had him go into the EDC folder. He saw the usual stuff... the processor folder, the EDC.ini, and changed file. But then he saw .ans files. Now mind you, I wasn't dialed in, so I was relying on his description. But he said that was the only other thing he saw... about five .ans files. I hadhim delete them for conveince sake--though I must say, I am usually more like Aloha1 in that I paste them somwhere else (I am paranoid, and rarely delete anything, especially when you're walking an end-user through it).
Anyway, after that, everything was fine. I am not sure if this contradicts what you posted, but it would appear that this pile of .ans files was holding up the FOH from processing. So, who knows for sure... take it for what it's worth, I guess.