Definitely not illegal, but completely classless. Contributing to the death of a hobby to make 25 bucks is just sad.
Most of us will all be here and collecting years from now, but one of the nice thing about the grading services is they offer a bit of security to the uninformed. We tend to get so uppity on this site about "educating yourself", "buyer beware", and "paying for opinions". Most of us could be considered well above the normal collector in the things we focus on. I still find it weird I end up teaching dealers at shows and shops about items they are clueless about or fakes on display. This is their job, not mine and I chose to learn more.
What is the reason to join this hobby if there is no safety net while learning? When you lose out on every one of your purchases during those building years because all you bought were mostly fake or altered cards, are you losing faith the day you find this out?
We need reliable grading services to offer assurance to those that are not experts. We need that new flow of collectors and investors. Think about it...many cards are passing by collectors and going to the investor market. Do you think that most buyers of 52 Mantles at the moment are true knowledgable collectors or like the Wagner has become, investors with huge disposable income buying a display piece? What happens to the value of those Mantles when that market of investors drops out due to lack of trust or faith?
Of course TPGs are opinion, of course they are human and thus make human error, of course the system is not perfect. However, the element of something fixable, like a resealable slab, removable flips, etc can be fixed. They need to focus on this crap now.
Some easy fixes -
Better slabs - beckett is killing at this now. The others need change asap.
Photo databases - should have started years ago.
Flips affixed to the slab. - flips should be adhesively stuck to the slab with the "void" wording that appears when peeled. Much like the labels on gas pumps to avoid tampering.
When I can go right on ebay and buy flips like this and then run another quick search and get empty slabs -
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-EMPTY-GRAD...oAAOSw5IJWf5UV
...the TPGs need to step it up.