I think similar to your counter-example are places/things (restaurants/products) that pretend to be fancy and through that pretense give you a worse product tha

I think similar to your counter-example are places/things (restaurants/products) that pretend to be fancy and through that pretense give you a worse product than if they had just cut the crap and served you what they could. I guess it's the tourist trap kind of place generally. They may be 80% of the way there in many ways, but the other 20% consists of so many glaring issues that it ruins the whole experience.