I'm sorry, peppermintkisses, you were mis-informed by the LV Associates. The bag in your photos is hands down, 100000%, without-a-doubt fake.
Like LouisV said, the folks in the LV Stores are salespeople. They are NOT trained in any type of authentication whatsoever. And yes, they should ashamed of themselves, especially the DM.
I welcome and encourage you to send photos of the bag to a third party authentication service, such as authenticate4U. They have knowledgable, expert authenticators for many brands. And, they have separate people for each brand, so there isn't one person claiming to be an expert in ALL brands. It's less than 10 bucks, and they are accepted by Paypal in the event of a fraud claim.
Your bag is fake - I stand firmly and confidently by my opinion.