I'm new to GMRS so I may see it differently than y'all because of that. It was the linked repeaters that piqued my interest (and the club is going to add more). I was discouraged from joining in before because the repeater closest to me is closed (paid members only, not accepting more). Coming from the HAM world the idea of having to be in multiple clubs just to use 2 repeaters close to me did not sit well. Without repeaters I would have almost no use for GMRS because family members aren't interested.
The comment above about using MURS if you want VHF seems odd to me. Wouldn't we need yet another radio for that? I've just about hit my limit on buying more radios just because of complicated regulations, especially when one radio is technically capable of doing them all. But if it didn't take buying dedicated equipment first just to experiment, I would have been interested in experimenting with what MURS could offer. I like the 150MHz VHF (or lower) range better than 400+.