To play devil's advocate, without A/B testing a lot of decisions would be made with insufficient relevant data, and lead to subpar results that affect the many negatively form the road.
A lot of decisions made with A/B testing are also made with insufficient relevant data, but it's less obvious since it's easy to think the A/B results cover everything.
counter-point : the companies that are most famous for A/B testing routinely are also the ones with the most notoriously non-existent customer service departments globally, facebook/google/amazon/ebay. Groups that harbor dissatisfied customers by essentially being 'the only show in town.'.
so, what i'm saying is : I think a lot of companies align themselves with the cash first and then measure whether or not the negative image/user impact is manageable .
(in fact I know they operate this way.)