Same experience, but one week later, this Saturday.
They added one of those achievements that award the blue tokens (used to buy stuff in the raider deck) where you had to kill/loot another raider.
Boom: PvP spiked... feels normal again today (Sunday) though.
The article says that you can send it in to be recycled. Idk, but if you get a voucher for sending it in to use for buying the next one (or another product) people might actually do it and it is not as bad as throwing it away. A rechargable battery would also degrade over time and since it can only be a tiny one... Also there is a chance people might use it to tinker.
However, I agree that this design choice (resulting in the low price) is very questionable to say the least.