Problems with alpha and possibly refraction

Hey guys, it's one of those pull your hair out kind of days. I've got an architectural scene full of people that are just alphas on planes that are all facing the camera. What wasn't apparent until last nights camera fly-through render was that the borders of the plane each person is assigned to were vaguely showing up (in what I've finally deduced to be over any reflective/refractive areas).

The only thing that has gotten rid of them was globally turning off either refraction OR reflection (it doesn't have to be both). I thought I could cheat and just use a composite tag on the plane with the alpha, so that it wasn't seen by refractions, but that isn't working as expected. I've been going down the list trying different tricks and scouring the internet.

It does seem that several people have had some sort of problem with alphas in R13, but I'm just not sure if it's the problem that I am having. The pic shows the problem, sadly my company will NOT let me post a scene file or more of the image.

Maxon has said there are bugs with the alphas, but if you dig through the notes of the very last update, it says there was a fix for alpha errors in that update.

I'm wondering if anyone has encountered this, or has ideas for a feasible work-around that isn't painful. This will have to be replicated across about 15 shots.