Oil Change

Years ago when our car needed an oil change Mac would  buy some oil (as cheap as we could get away with), drain the old oil from our car and put in the new.  Fairly cheap, fairly simple to do.  Then car makers got wise to people doing this so they made it almost impossible to get the old oil out of your car unless you were a mechanic.  So we started taking our cars to cheap places to get the oil changed, think Jiffy Lube and similar places.
Then when I got my last car I leased it and 2 years of free maintenance came with it so I haven't worried about oil changes.  Now the 2 years are up and I had to find some place to get my oil changed. The dealership said I could take it anywhere I wanted as long as I made sure that they used synthetic oil.  Why synthetic oil, has real oil gotten too cheap and they can't make enough money out of it?
Who knows, but Mac found a local place to do it, but it sure wasn't what old Jiffy Lube use to charge.
I Googled to find the difference between the two oils, other than price, and found out that synthetic oil is supposed to do better with extreme temperature changes, it doesn't thin out in cold weather,  doesn't break down at hot temperatures and it lasts longer.  Seeing as my lease makes me change the oil every 6 months and that's oftener than I need to,  it isn't lasting one bit longer. So my car has its synthetic oil and   I'm a little bit wiser and bit more poor.