>Even if we abandon looking at it as as a strictly energy in energy out situation
There is no reason to abandon looking at it that way. Eating healthier will not result in you losing weight if your caloric intake remains the same. Feel free to continue eating $1 burgers, just eat fewer of them.
I literally cannot speak to a human at my ISP unless I tell the robocall system that I want to cancel. As in, I'll call and say I need to return some equipment, be on hold for an hour, leave a callback number, and not get called back in the same week. Versus calling and saying I need to cancel, then getting connected to a service rep in 15 seconds and asking them about returning equipment.
I am going to buy all the land surrounding your house and use it to build airports and coal processing plants. Not your land, not your business, so I better not hear any complaints alright?
Generally speaking, you don't lose access to your Steam library unless you defraud them, e.g. by charging back purchases. I don't buy that the Russian guy got banned for spamming. The only evidence that that was the ban reason is his own words. Considering that this story seems to have only been picked up by sites like "oneangrygamer", "riseupgamer", and the Daily Stormer, I'd lay money he's not being honest.
Overwatch briefly had a system like this, where you could mark players in your matches positively or negatively, so they'd be more or less likely to show up in your future matches. They had to remove it after a top level player could no longer find fair matches. He was waiting 10-20 minutes before getting matched with much lower skilled players. He was by all accounts a pleasant person, but he was so good at the game that many people would mark him negatively simply so they would never have to play against him.
The article does say that those costs aren't included in the maintenance total.
But considering that they replaced the entire windshield (and sunroof glass) for what they describe as a stone chip, I'm inclined to believe they may have been overpaying or overdoing maintenance anyways. AAA suggests the price to repair a windshield chip would be around $100, and that replacement isn't necessary if it's smaller than a quarter.