Literally ripping out the seats and putting them in a different aircraft is a pretty cheap move, sure, but do you not agree that utilizing the same product between the 757 and A330 was a good thing? The Business Elite seats on Delta's 75Es are (or were at the time) nearly identical to what can/could be found on the 767s and 777s. Sure they might have not have been reusing seats like US was, BUT the product was standard across those fleets when they overhauled their cabins. And correct me if I'm wrong, but were there not issues with the certification of the new wall laminates/bulkheads that caused installation delays? That doesn't change the fact that the cabins still looked like #### while they got whatever they needed to figure out figured out, but I'm not sure if that was necessarily their intent from the start to have things done on different schedules.
Then again, I could also imagine a montage, set to Yakety Sax, of US upper-levels making decisions on cabin mods. Which could also explain what you see out there. I'm not really sure anymore! At least we seem to have a better direction in that department now than in years past.