It's unfortunate that there are a small minority of consumers who abuse the system, making it more difficult for people with real concerns/problems to get assistance. Like others here, I'm surprised that the airline waited as long as they did to address the situation.
My (not so) quick story -
Many, many years ago - in another lifetime - I worked in the retail world. The (well-known) store I worked for sold hand tools that had a lifetime guarantee - break them, bring them in, and we'd replace them with a new one.
One day we had a teenager with his mother. He had inherited tools from his grandfather and was replacing a few broken ones. No problem. A busted socket, a seized up ratchet and a broken tape measure were replaced and we sent him on his way. A few days later he was back. This time with about a dozen tools. The "brokenness" of these tools was debatable (rusty, etc), but we still replaced them, smiled, and sent him along.
In the days and weeks that followed, he continued coming in and replacing his "broken" (read: old) tools for new ones. The condition of the "broken" tools was more and more questionable, and it was apparent that he was simply systematically replacing his grandfathers tools with shiny new ones.
(One day he came in with several tools that were so indistinguishable from new ones that a salesperson simply took the tools in the back room, wiped them with a rag, and returned the same tools back to him as "new". He must have caught on when he got home since the next time he came back his tools were all marked.)
The final straw came when he came in with a bucket filled with wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers, etc. After replacing hundreds of dollars worth of tools that were nothing more than dirty, we finally told him that we were no longer going to cater to him. If it was broken - in other words, NOT useable - we'd replace it, but a spot of rust, a little dirt or grease, or a scratch on a handle would not necessitate a replacement.
His mother, who always accompanied him, flipped out and wanted a manager, but thankfully our manager had been aware of the situation for weeks and stood his ground.
In the grand scheme of things, did the company really care about some teenager replacing dirty tools with clean ones? Probably not. In most cases, a few hundred dollars is worth it for the goodwill it can by... for MOST customers.
But in the case of the rabbi in the OP (and my tool swapping frend) there are some people who you will NEVER make happy. They will abuse the system and continually look for ways to get something for nothing. They are proof that the customer is not always right.
