I would love to edit my comment to instead say "having the rug pulled from under my feet", which is the feeling I was expressing.

don't those mean the same thing?

(not arguing)

recently saw an old alfred hitchcock presents where the character does the cheesiest most absurd rug pull ... and the person was boom dead. i assumed that was the origin of the term

'rug pull' has come to be mean (thanks to crypto) a premeditated & malicious financial play in which someone offers something for money and then vanishes before fulfilling their part of the original bargain.

OP edited to the idiomatic 'rug pulled from under my feet' to specify that he doesn't mean the above.

They're just telling you it's not going to be $0.00. It could be $5/year, $20/mo or anything else. It's the gentleman's rug-pull.

Since when did gentlemen pull rugs? It seems antithetical to the behaviour of what I understand by 'gentleman'.