It sounds like the CSR was correct in your case.
These are the rules:
You must live in one of the 17 market areas served by stations owned and operated by the CBS corporation. The 17 markets served by CBS O&O stations are: Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Marquette, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Green Bay.
AND
You must not be in range to receive the signals of a CBS affiliate from a nearby city. For instance many people in Baltimore (an O&O station market) are in range of the Washington DC CBS affiliate. These Baltimore residents cannot receive the HD feed without a waiver from the Washington DC CBS affiliate. The logic behind this is that the owners of the affiliate station do not wish to lose viewers to the New York or LA CBS station, generally a loss of viewers leads to a loss of ad revenue for the station.
BUT
Importantly, it is possible to get a waiver from the affiliate station allowing you receive a distant CBS feed. Today, CBS is attempting to get blanket waivers for the HD feed for all customers affected by these neighboring affiliate stations. If this effort is not successful, we will seek to get individual CBS waivers for individual customers upon request.