You forgot one more reason this is crappy behavior. It unfairly crowds out startups who want to go with a sustainable business model from the outset.
I realize "fairness" is not an excuse for inability to compete with the marketing of other companies. But if a company wants to test customer appetite for a service with pricing that is upfront honest, stable, and bound to only get better over time, there's never enough time to give it a proper shot.
This is just the technical equivalent of dumping or subsidizing, and has become fairly common in quite a number of industries to keep out competitors. The complete lack of regulation enforcement has been a problem for at least the last 40 years. To me it also seems to be a hallmark of the SV venture capital scene, where the majority of the capital isn't used to build a better product but to flood the market for a few years to gain a controlling share.
I realize "fairness" is not an excuse for inability to compete with the marketing of other companies. But if a company wants to test customer appetite for a service with pricing that is upfront honest, stable, and bound to only get better over time, there's never enough time to give it a proper shot.