At what point are people responsible for their own actions or ignorance? Apple hardly makes the battery replacement option a secret, and there are plenty of 3rd party retailers that advertise them too. Anyone who bought a new iPhone because they didn't realize they could get the battery replaced has failed to do even the most cursory research into what options are out there for solving their problem. It would be one thing if we were talking the 1st generation iPhone days, when the "battery replacement" option was the usually "out of warranty" device replacement that was effectively Apple's entire repair process for the phone at the time. Then your "battery replacement" costs were ~50% of the cost of a new phone, and that definitely gets into the "buy a new phone instead of replacing the battery" territory. But the ~$100 battery replacement option has been around since at least 2010[1], now 14 years later there's no excuse for not being aware, or becoming aware when you need it.

[1]: https://archive.nytimes.com/gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/201...