People who have done the "wrong" RAF chain, have had their links fixed by calling Customer Service.

Different RAF chains can work, it depends on what you want to do.
A chain of: A > B > C > D > E...
Will result in the greatest total number of levels across all of your accounts.

The cascading for the granted levels won't work as well.
You have four jumps, instead of two.
So instead of 2^2 (4) you need 2^4 (16) characters boosted for the cascading of RAF to work perfectly.

If you were planning on running several groups, without the aid of a booster.
Then you'd be leveling toons on A (in sets of five), at the same rate as you leveled toons on BCDE.
So when you level toons... say on ABCDE...
Your set of four toons would be:
A: Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Warlock.
B: Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Warlock.
C: Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Warlock.
D: Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Warlock.
E: Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Warlock.

The cascading of granted levels, would be...
Two toons (from E) to D.
(And two to C, two to B, two to A)...

But then one extra full toon...
From D to C...
(And one more from: C to B and B to A)...

And fractions of a toon (so not maximum level toons) beyond that.

Like before "E" doesn't receive any extra toons.
But overall, there are toons across all of your accounts.

So the:
A > B > C
A > D > E
Is not necessarily the best of chains.
But with a booster toon, I prefer the previous chain to a straight A > B > C > D > E chain.