Oh, I forgot the kicker of the story:
They can’t acknowledge that they don’t validate their input fields properly without acknowledging the need for a filter to be added while fixing that same validation code (and they should fix it tbh).
But if they don’t fix it, I’ll keep hacking their validation form (my WP Plugin works), and if they do fix it - they’ll add that filter for me I’m next to positive which allows me to code a less hacky solution. Win-win. Just took me forever to realize it. 😅