wow on old wives tale in the business
I love when I find these............
the inspectors in the merrimac valley LOVE ME FOR THIS
Many local counties I've worked in have local codes that say at least one GFI shall be installed on all services. (you can't build a 200 amp service with nothing hooked to it.) I just did one last week for two pumping stations, so I had two breakers for pumps and one GFI.
However, several times I've been in the same situation as you,, if you're replacing a service, and there's not a GFI anywhere on the service, he could misapply the local code to that situation.