I'll agree cognitive illusion - there was a bit of legerdemain in the claim, but I think they admitted it up front. It's averaged - you'll have years where you shell out $8000, and years where you shell out $500. What happens for most people is that they see the peak you mentioned, and assume it's going to keep going at the level or higher, and it doesn't.

Oh, yeah - another one of their points was 'always do the scheduled maintenance on time!'