while we're on the topic of #rant I just want to bring up these gems I just found on SuiteAnswers (emphasis mine)

NetSuite supports one HTTP success code for RESTlets: 200 OK. This code indicates that the request was executed successfully. Note that this code does not necessarily mean that your request worked as you intended... In these cases, an HTTP code of 200 is used, and details of the error are described in the response body.