Does it strike anyone as shady to have a list price of 17.99/mo for 1 CPU, 1gb ram server https://www.racknerd.com/kvm-vps which I can't even begin to think how to justify such a high price.

And then at the same time perpetual new year and black Friday sale https://www.racknerd.com/BlackFriday/ that charges about 2$ a month for more powerful setup. Together with a scarcity marketing tactic of a clock ticking that you can refresh and reset.

Could just set up a reasonable day to day price, attract regular customers who might scale up some instances for a project, but no this was the direction they explicitly chose.