Hello, new to forums.
"Unfortunately, for a lot of people, these combo deals are the only way to buy a graphics card at all without paying a scalper a hugely inflated price "
Even the retailers are doing price inflation. And I would argue Newegg would be the worst unless the GPUs from these shuffle deals are actually from the marketplace? In that case, it would make more sense as to the ridiculous pricing. Despite the vendor price inflation, the prices are well above the MSRP. And, then on top of that you have to pay for something else that you don't want. That could be even worse than buying from a scalper.
I'm not familiar with business ethics or the logistics of supply and demand, but it seems if businesses are seeing that people will pay anything, it only makes since to closely match scalpers prices.
Not to mention the top tier motherboards are still very hard to get.