I think Apple's dropped the ball in a few ways here. Firstly the lack of communication about reduced performance, less than convincing subsequent communication about why they did it and now the pricing adjustment on replacement batteries. I think that they should have done more, and offered to replace degraded batteries at zero cost. Apple's brand is significantly supported by their post-sales service, and this feels like a bodged fix that's being grudgingly rolled out.
When you're someone that's pretty much fully bought into their entire ecosystem, through iOS and MacOS and a number of devices on both, the damage to that trust is quite significant and definitely makes you question the value of the premium price paid for their products.