If everything had been announced correctly, they would have only been able to carry 4,000 Honor over to purchase the new Season 10 gear anyway.

People have every right to be upset about the gold they spent in enchanting/gemming/reforging the gear they bought, or even the time they "wasted" to grind Honor for gear only to have to grind more Honor for the better gear a few days later, but I don't think anyone should complain about the amount of Honor they are being compensated.

Yes but absolutely nothing was announced correctly, so your whole point is a bit moot. The people who spent a whole week farming for top quality honor gear would have done so a week later, instead of now having to regrind it all again (minus 4k honor that blizzard will give them).

I don't think you realize the sheer amount of grinding some people were able to do. One guildy got a full honor set for his pally and was half way through his offset. He did this grind because he was certain that the gear he was getting was going to be the best available to him for half a year (he does not do arena or rated bgs). Now while I'm sure he appreciates the bonus 4k honor, he'd rather have his week back to re-grind now that the real top end honor gear is out.

I think a better idea for people that ground out way more than 4000 honor (since they obviously can tell who did and did not buy gear during that week) would just be to make all of their gear have the 2 hour trade in time put back on it. Sounds like that would fix everything fairly for everyone.

To be honest, the whole issue was aggravated somewhat that it was Alterac Valley honour weekend - the Battleground holiday that it is by far the easiest to rack up fast honour owing to the way that Honour is rewarded for destroying necessary objectives which are destroyed almost every BG, even on losses.

If AV hadn't been up, I imagine that most people who racked up huge amounts of honour across multiple alts would simply have been unable to do so.

You might be right that they would have gotten less honor but they would have still spent the same amount of time grinding.