I agree that there's an ethical line, but I also think some people have a huge double-standard about ethical issues, being very hard on individuals or the consumer side, but excusing just about anything on the corporate side (such as inventing gouge-level fees to apply against people in captive situations) as somehow permissible within the market. It takes an Enron to wake people up, and some on the far right would try to defend even that.

Am not trying to say that two wrongs make a right, but if you look at the history of practices within the airline, hotel and rental car industries and what have generated consumer complaints, you'll see again and again a legacy of practices like hidden fees, bait and switch, gouging in certain situations and other very preventable, easily avoided practices if there were an intention to play fair. But the travel-related industries in the U.S. are practically without peer for introducing unnecessary complexity to the business model for the purpose of revenue maximization.

Or, in simpler terms, customers have long felt they were being gamed, and that kind of feeling crushes goodwill and leads to a desire to even the score. Some go too far in trying to do so. But trust and good faith between parties has long been in short supply.