[sophacles]

I'm not sure if you are being snarky or missing forrests for trees (or the other way around). It's probably a complicated multi-variable situation. If I buy a polished turd for 70% again as much as a regular turd, I stil have a turd, albeit a lovingly polished one. The one widely applicable truism is not cancelled out by another: "a fool and his money are soon parted".

Another way of looking: those places all got exactly what they paid for: someone good at manipulating a given set of rules and following strategies to the T, and who brings a fancy name to the table. Too bad they didn't also focus on the "changes behavior when the rules and the strategy don't make sense" too.