Steel support beam at the end of the kitchen island bench

The plans have been signed off and foundations poured. I kept changing my mind about this but now I really hate the idea of my cost cutting exercise. The support steel beam will be visible from the entry of my 12mx1.8m hallway. It will block the vision of the t.v when working at the island bench and why I decided to have that pimple in the middle of the 7.2x 9.7 room I don't know. The builder is getting back with a quote to make the top floor an extra 3 squares so it will sit flush with the ground floor.

Hi Mckinnon,
How does your beam look?
We asked the salesman for a quote to remove our support pole at the end of the kitchen bench and were told $2000. (he phoned their engineer) Great! So we signed up, paid $5000, the rough plan went to the draftsman and came back without about 20 of the changes we asked for but with the pole now included!
Of course we made a list and went back to the salesman who told us that "you must have a support pole and it must be exactly there."
Talk about gutted! I have been on the phone to the contract administrator and have received no joy.
From what I can gather, this can be done ( there is a bathroom above) but the builder just wont do it.
I am thinking perhaps we were underquoted in the first place and they would rather take the $2000 off than wear the cost of beams necessary, although she was very non-committal when I mentioned that at least we would save the $2ooo. So that is where we are at.
Thing is ,we are supposed to do our colour selections soon and we have been told that we will not get the amended working drawings until we pay the rest of the deposit. This will bring us up to having paid $20,000 and still not having a final plan or fixed price.
The big issue is not so much the pole (we still hate the idea) but that I am not confident that there wont be any more nasty surprises or "mistakes" in their favour. My husband wants to go ahead with these builders but I am so unsure that I am not sleeping and am feeling sick with worry.

The compromise we made to get rid of the support structure was to extend the first floor to sit flush with the ground floor. If we got rid of the beam and left the floor plans the way they were, the span of the steel would have been way too long. Our builder is a very kind gentleman from the old school and he is only charging us cost price for the timber and roof etc for the added 4 sq's. He is adding 10k to the cost. We said go for it. The draftsman/engineer and energy rating will have to do amendments but that won't cost much.