(meta commentary) really gnarly word choice: "drop" in "they're going to drop the real prices in your lab"?

I took your meaning as "they're gonna drop [a bad surprise on you by raising] the real prices"... so at least it's not quite as tortured as the ambiguous "support for version N dropped today" (where you often can't even infer the direction from context).

this isn't just a tangent, I'm having trouble understanding the point you're trying to make, which hinges entirely on deciding if you meant "drop" literally