I think most people think of "ploy" like "plan" or "strategy", which implies the thing the marketing is referring to is marketing. That is, a price change, or new feature is rolled out specifically because of marketing. This is more a reaction and less a plan, and as such calling it a ploy carries some implication that they planned the whole thing. Whether that's a valid assumption or not from the meaning of the words, it's obvious that's how some people are interpreting it. That was definitely my interpretation.