Altar of Ascendency not awarding passive skill points

I used a quest item that specifically said I would get ascendency points, but when I reach the Altar of Ascendency and interact with it my passive tree pops up but I'm not given passive points to spend. I read somewhere that refunding all points can fix this but I don't have enough gold to refund all of my passives and swap class so I can't try this fix.

This happens after completing the 'Test of Will' (the altar wasn't there at the end of the 'normal' trial). If this is a mistake on my part, then the UI needs to be changed as the interact window at the altar says "Interact To Gain Ascendency Passive Skill Points" and takes me to the passive tree when I click it.

This is frustrating enough to make me put the game down (at least until this is fixed). I hate moaning in player reports but there are generic bugs that require a reload/partial gameplay interruption and there are bugs like this, which feel like they've rendered the past 40 hours of playing a waste of time for me. I'm not carrying on locked out of progression because of a bug that, according to other forum posts, has been here for 6 months.