This is what I think happened. Trust levels were artificially granted using group permissions to allow Beta forum posting permissions they wanted for bug reporting and such. Those were account wide and did not expire at the end of the Beta.
Trust levels in the current forum software are SUPPOSED to be specific to the character and drop off if someone does not maintain the activity to keep TL3.
Should we finally get Bnet account level permissions, the trust level, post history, post count, likes, flags, and Ignore would be Bnet account wide.
For now, it seems they finally fixed a mistake that granted perma TL 3 to accounts across all chars even if the person no longer meets TL3 requirements for participation or behavior. Getting suspended did not drop a person out of it…
Anyway, that is my guess on the whole thing. It is a bit early to ask.
The issue with notifications is just a massive bug or something. It is impacting everyone including the Blues. They know about it I think. Not sure what they can do about it, but they know.