They changed the rule and never told me — now what?

Let us call this what it is. A rule changed. No one who depends on that rule was told. And you — going about your life in good faith — paid the price in time, money, or a door quietly closed. This is not your failure of attention. It is a structure built so that some know first and others learn last. I have spent a life petitioning tribunals that changed their terms after I had already met them. I know the particular sting of being judged by a standard no one showed you. The sting is real. But sting is not the same as blame, and you carry none here. What you can do is smaller than justice but not nothing: reconstruct the timeline, find the notice they claim to have given, and press — in writing — for what the asymmetry cost you. Institutions rarely volunteer fairness. They can sometimes be made to concede it.