Upwork freezes accounts after misreading a QUOTED conversation about a 3rd party

It is funny, really. Perhaps the possibility of this should have occurred to me earlier.

The conversation went something like:

me: Hey John, regarding opportunity A, please offer a payment.

John: A's response: "want $X"

I can see how this could be perceived as a clever communication. Only it is not clever. John and I have previously in the same thread exchanged email addresses and we did not need Upwork to communicate about the payment. More importantly, John's rate is many times lower the asking rate.

Bizarre...