It is unfortunate, but as a consumer of WP developer hours (i,e, small business owner who uses WP for our website) i would agree with the misconception. However, I would say that it is 100% worth paying the extra for the services. I recently invested >$1,500 in a gallery modification. The original plugin was provided free by the developer, and the modifications aren't overly complex (being able to select taxonomies of pictures to see). However, the result is a gallery that is unlike anything else on the market and we have customer come to use with print-screens of our filtered gallery saying "I want this and that".

This is definitely worth the development money we paid, and I think WP needs more good level developers doing professional level work for small business facilitated through the WP framework.

You can see the gallery here: http://www.thebespokeflorist.com/gallery/