iPad Amzingly Terrible iPad support. They said no photo backup! as if

[Night Spring]

The only supported way to get synced photos off of a device is to email them. Or use some kind of sharing app (not supported). You can use a backup extractor, or something like iPhone Explorer to do it, too, however you can't expect Apple to support that. They can only support Apple apps.

I don't think synced photos are in the backup, either. I've done restore from backup, and synced photos always sync again from the computer, they don't reappear when backup is done. I think the only way to get them off is iPhone Explorer and other such programs that copy things directly off the ipad, not backup extractor.

In any case, I don't think OP is talking about synced photos. Somehow the customer service reps he was talking to thought he was.