OP answered his own question.

You can have all the legal protections you want, but if you don't have a valid BP, you aren't boarding the aircraft. Whether you can get your money back or recover the cost of that $5K walk-up ticket you had to buy sometime a year from now, is all a matter of risk tolerance.

Of course there are satisfied customers. Not everybody has a bad experience. Even some people who play Russian roulette walk away.