Exactly. If I make a claim, you don't have to pay me to earn the right to dispute that claim. "Here's a lamp. It's magic." "Uhh...It doesn't appear to actually be magic. It's not even a decent lamp." "How dare you say it's not magic? I didn't charge you for it!"
Why do you think "free" is used as a marketing strategy? Obviously there is a monetary benefit somewhere - or anyone attempting a "free" or even just a "low(er) price" strategy must be doing wrong. An example is Uber, which has just generated yet another billion dollar loss headline.
Apart from the data collection model, what it does is it removes the incentive of others to enter that market and possibly create something better.
And on an individual level, something can have a cost merely by existing - because I have top choose. And if I choose wrong I end up worse than where I could be.
Imagine I was an evil guy from a Disney movie. My next project to annoy people might be to create an app that seems to work - but has a lot of very annoying flaws. However, I never mention the flaws (of course not), instead I go all out on my marketing and make a lot of claims to get people to use my evil software. I then sit back and with an evil laugh enjoy the frustration that I created a million times - the (Disney-level) evil scheme succeeded. I wasted lots of people's time; I may also have sabotaged other (non-evil) projects by taking users away from them, and I managed to raise the world-wide frustration level.
Unless you write a check out to them, then I classify that as being free. You're feeling that you're entitled to a service that you don't pay anything for.
