a friend of mine was trying to set permissions via FTP, and not via the control panel, he was telling me that they are all set to 777 and i was looking on the CP and i could see they where still set to 755.
turned out that his FTP and other program where telling him lies, have you tried to set them via FTP or control panel?

the other issue i have a feeling about is that you might not be logged into the main account with full admin rights, this would limit things you can do via FTP and control see more panel. so in effect. it would restore any changes you make if you dont have full access.