Microtransactions in Online games Today

It honestly surprises me that this topic slipped under the radar and all, but I've been having more than a few discussions and/or arguments over the topic of microtransactions in games. For those who don't know, microtransactions or micropayments are "now ... often defined to mean payments too small to be affordably processed by credit card or other electronic transaction processing mechanism" by Wikipedia. A less abstract definition would be to look at Xbox Points, Wii Points, and anything like that. So the question is "Are you getting what you pay for, or getting nickle-and-dimed?" What do you think?