Not stupid, just busy and desperate. And, sure, perhaps less intelligent than the people who are paid vast amounts of money to come up with marketing that's optimized to deceive them, while remaining just "technically honest" enough to avoid catching out too many members of the PMC who might kick up a fuss.
Do US banks still process each day's transactions in largest-first order, so that they get to charge as many insufficient funds fees as possible? (While mouthing the excuse that it's for the customer's benefit, so that their more important transactions like rent are more likely to clear, and in any case it was disclosed in the small print so there's no grounds to complain). That's the kind of thing that's illegal in any other industrialised country, and IMO reasonable to call a grift.