Rewriting from scratch, should you do it?

I think, as all directives such as never rewrite, jump of a bridge etc... means don't do it before thinking it through and knowing what you get ourself into. In this case you have a well specced problem (very rare!) and they tried both options. In both case spending trivial amounts of money dev time.

The "never" rewrite of course comes from those systems that had a painful birth and cost millions to develop originally. In this case a rewrite will take longer than what is acceptable in a business (often anything taking longer than 1 business cycle).