Yeah, there's even a thread about this somewhere on flyertalk. When my wife's "regular" passport came, we were annoyed but figured we'd fix it later -- extra pages were free, so why do it now. The passport was still good. Of course, later, they instantaneously announced that it would be $82 for more pages. Since she now has less than 4 years left, it seemed silly to pay that.

We actually called our Congressman to see if his staff could help us (they once helped get a passport issued a few years ago when they were all backed up). No dice -- the State Dept wouldn't budge. I tried directly as well, and nothing. Other than sue them, I'm not sure what else I could have done! My wife was cheated by our own gov't of 4 years worth of passport services.