The player must have been either the most unlucky sod ever, or he had soup for brains.
Relic themselves have said the reason they aren't removing Shreks from volks is that why they have them goes beyond lack of a good AT gun. The soonest reliable counter to enemy tanks you can get out is the Jadgpanzer assuming you went battlegroup HQ.
I'm all in favor of taking shreks away if we can get some changes to OKW's structure overall, for instance reduction of the fuel cost of vehicles with an increase in the manpower cost and giving Volks/Obers/Sturms some more varied and interesting upgrades.
King Tiger is the root of all problems here. Why? Allow me to explain.
In CoH1, Panzer Elite had strong and versatile infantry and decent but not sustainable vehicle support. For that, they got to call-in a pair of Panthers for only 1000 MP, once all upgrades have been recieved. That was their endgame and it worked fine. They didn't even require fuel so you could keep buying your regular tanks; if you could afford the manpower. This was usually not the case, as why bother with a Marder II when you can get Panthers for so cheap, or resupply your expensive and strong infantry?
In CoH2, there is a similar thing. You save up your resources; which you can because of your amazingly strong and versatile infantry, and skipping all of your totally optional vehicles that you don't need for anything else besides trying to advance and cause losses, and your endgame goal is a heavy call-in. However, the King Tiger is no Panther. Besides the fact that OKW can already call in Panthers, King Tiger has far more survivability, and has an extremely powerful gun that makes it all but unapproachable by infantry. It takes an inordinate amount of units and effort to kill. Sure, 4 T-34/85s can kill an unsupported King Tiger easily, and maybe even 2 if you don't get hit, but chances are that won't happen, you'll lose a few tanks to the KT's support, it'll blitz away at 15% health and you'll be forced to withdraw and look for other options, that's the more likely scenario.
The call-in Panthers couldn't do that. They were great AT at no fuel cost and decent protection, but that was all they were. King Tiger maintains the ability to skip your vehicles but adds far more survivability and a gun that slays infantry. The fact that it costs fuel means nothing besides you have the luxury of just perpetually saving for more and more KTs, skipping everything in between. And no, beating well used and protected KTs in groups is bordering impossibility, and however rare they are, and will always deal more damage than they costed.
Panther didn't let you make it your only vehicle you built because it had its limitations. KT has slow turret turn speed shared by every tank, and that's it. Negligible if it's not alone.
As for removing Schrecks from Volks, the cost is fine, except Panzerschreck should have always been a doctrinal upgrade. But it's too late for that I believe. Maybe you can move it to Sturmpioneers, and while it does make them PzGrenadier 2.0, it does fix many problems associated with giving Volks Panzerschrecks.