Before i say anything else i want you to know that i understand perfectly what you are saying but at the end of the day you have to give a little more though to it. I have never used bot services to promote my content because:
- i wanted to attract people that actually like my content.
- I wanted to have people that i could interact with them and will be loyal followers from now on
- I didn't want to bury other's people content which i know some have more quality posts than me
- I actually wanted to earn something. Using bots is a waste of money cause you actually don't earn back nothing the way the prices are. You only get reputation and if people start flagging you, you gonna lose it all.
- As i said in the first comment, it will mislead new people that would like to join the platform
- you make enemies by using the bots like that
It's not entirely your fault though, steemit.inc should have done something about bots, promoted channel and in general the interface
At the end of the day it only brings harm to the platform and you