Gosh. I'm not sure I'd dare to change someone's pic... but it's good to be brave. I know what you mean about the toing and froing. That's been the alternative. I reject, they to and fro, then we do it all again with another article because the message never sunk in.
I love this point of view. I think if it was that bad, I'd probably just reject it. I have pondered editing a piece, which didn't quite make sense. But then there was also a picture issue, a query over plagiarism, which I didn't believe (it wasn't good enough!), but my internet service provider blocked the website flagged by the plagiarism checker, so I couldn't check for sure. I just rejected it in the end.