The Fine Print

Per Wikipedia:

The use of fine print is a common advertising technique in certain market niches, particularly those of high-margin specialty products or services uncompetitive with those in the mainstream market. The practice, for example, can be used to mislead the consumer about an item's price or value, or the nutritional content of a food product.

Identifying and recognizing the fine print has been the key strength of so called "experience" we gain over the years. Everyone was burned or disappointed multiple times in the past and over time we learn to approach with skepticism the things which are advertised.

Assorted examples (some of them were surprising to me even though I consider myself experienced...):

• Boarding a flight: "Sir, you have been upgraded". "But sir, no food". The "cost optimized" upgrades tried by Lufthasna. Seems like they have backed off from that already (and also restarted serving coffee in the economy) after their customer satisfaction scores collapsed. Not that I care much at all about intra-European upgrades (short flights, same seats, probably the only benefit is you deplane early), but it might have been felt like being stigmatized - sitting among the upper class people who enjoy their meals and look at you clearly not belonging here.
  
  
• Enjoy the free WiFi in our airport lounge. Except that we block media streaming so to watch your favorite tennis match during the long layover you need to purchase a 5G data plan anyway.
  
  
• Upgrade your software to our newest chip, it is fully compatible with the one you have been using today and has more memory and processing power. Except the memory is of a different kind and accessing it will freeze your code for up to 80ms so you will no longer be able to reliably service time-critical sections of the code implementing the communications protocol.
  
  
• Use our open-source implementation of the protocol stack. It does everything for you. Except that it excessively writes to the flash memory causing it to wear out after 1-2 years of the product operation in the field.

Generally I'm super skeptical to all such great deals and promises. It seems misleading the consumer is one of the key foundations of the modern economy. But this in fact is not much different than a jungle where the nature baits its preys in so many ways. Why should civilized humans be different?