This is a pathetic cop-out. I don't think I could do it any better, but when people are being stranded for this length of time, I almost certainly couldn't do it any worse.
I'm a computer programmer by profession. If one of the programs I write does something wrong, I fix it. I don't ask my customers if they could do any better, because that would be exactly the kind of industry versus customer attitude that you claim this isn't. You shouldn't be asking "Could you do any better?", you should be asking "Could we do any better?" The attitude displayed by the industry appears to be one of utter complacency, with any suggestion from people not claiming to be experts being batted away with "Nah, too difficult."