Why is deceitful selling so normalized here?

Over the past few weeks, I've talked to a few senior citizens who're of course the targets of the big scammers, but unwittingly also subject to so many smaller scummy, deceitful upsells and cross-sells. Warranties from sellers that overlap and duplicate the brand warranty, subscriptions covertly activated without their knowledge, false claims about length of service, free features, speed, strength, you name it. It appears people will do just about ANYTHING to sell you a product, and even more so if you're elderly and not tech savvy. I went with my elderly neighbours to purchase a home appliance for them, and they were being bombarded with so many "AI", "Smart", this and that jargon. I sifted through it all and helped them select a piece. Then grew progressively angry at how the salespeople (major brand) kept lying and lying and lying some more to sell their in-house warranty coverage, in spite of my rebutting the claims using their own site and brand T&Cs. Finally relented when they realized I won't budge. But it's very very concerning. Everyone is lying, scamming and manipulating to sell to you and then dropping you like a hot potato the moment you encounter an issue with that product. You sit on customer care calls for hours and you're expected to give them a rating just for saying they'll "get back to you". I know some of these issues are universal, but we seem to be extremely comfortable with scamming, even when there's clear documentation to the contrary. I feel nervous when my parents go to buy anything these days. It wasn't the case 10, 15 years back. What changed?