2003 Honda accord lower ball joints

I was going to replace the lower ball joints on a friends Honda accord. The Honda dealer had said they needed replacing and he had gone to precision tune and somewhere else for a quote. I rented the ball joint replacement kit from Advance so i was ready for that potential issue. i watched several videos on removing lower ball joints from Honda’s and i have separated probably 10 of them before when changing a cv axle but I could NOT get this one separated. i had gone and bought a ball joint puller the day before and had a pickle fork. I could not get it separated. Went back to harbor freight and bought one of the separator tools and it broke in 10 minutes. I worked on it for 3 hours and nothing. would not separate. I told him and took it back, then boot was split but the rest of the ball joint was Ok. He was ok but he took it to another place and he said the first thing they asked him was why would the Honda place tell him need needed new lower balls joint. NOT Necessary. I am just wondering what I ran into with this particular situation?? I do tie rods all the time???