My expectation is that he describes his level of personalized service the same way in private emails as in public comments. If you find that expectation overly haughty, well, you know where the refund button is.
Many or most so-called "free" services, e.g., Twitter, Facebook, etc., are a front for another money-making scheme. If you're not the customer, you're the product.
Hacker News is an advertisement for Y Combinator.
Let's not pretend that this is a charity.
It's also worth noting that the operators of such "free" services don't publicly take the haughty attitude of "if you don't like the service, you can have a refund of $0". You'll never hear that rhetoric from dang. They want people to use their services. Only unaffiliated outside defenders use that rhetoric.