I think it's because of the original marketing for Pixel Pass. Google marketed it as being better value than other post-paid mobile phone plan arrangements in some way. It's just the same boilerplate terms under which a large proportion of mobile phones have been sold for decades in my country - so it was confusing when Google tried to sell me "a new way to buy a phone" where literally the only new thing about it was that you can get discounted Google services bundled. I wouldn't be surprised if people are getting pissed off about it now for not receiving value that was never actually offered.