Had a similar story with British Airways. My flight was cancelled last moment and I was rebooked for the next day - changing my direct flight to an inconvenient connection and arriving to the final destination over 24hrs late.

When I filled out compensation form they first lied to me about who operated the flight: it's not us, it's our codeshare! Once we sorted it out they lied about the distance: your disrupted journey was less than 1,500km, so here is less then half of your compensation (for a flight from London to San Francisco). I eventually got my full compensation, but it took several months of back and forth.

Airlines will absolutely lie to you, in writing, about the things that are trivial to verify. I guess there's no downside to them - in the best case some people may settle for no or smaller compensation, in the worst case they pay what they were supposed to pay anyway.